


file it under fic

by wtfmulder



Series: filing system [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Drabbles, F/F, F/M, Gen, prompts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2018-10-13 11:14:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 44
Words: 25,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10512642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wtfmulder/pseuds/wtfmulder
Summary: Assorted drabbles & fics that have been prompted or are very short.





	1. the water's wet

**Author's Note:**

> Drabble; PG; Angst; MSR; Set at the beginning of Season 3, after all of those terrible things happened to them; Prompt - “It’s just rain. You aren’t going to melt!

God, they’re a pair of morose-looking bastards. Who knew detectives still wore trench coats?

The rain is comin’ down hard outside, that’s true. It’s nothing but a sun-storm, though, a furious attack from this great earth that acts more important than it really is. It’ll be gone in a few minutes. But they’re just staring at it like it’s never gonna end.

I’m sitting in my booth, like I always am on Wednesday nights. Wednesday nights are the Steak-and-Egg Special nights. And normally I’m the only one here because the Steak-and-Egg Special ain’t even that good, just like my momma made. But these kids are from outta town, probably outta their element. And they’re just looking at the sky like it’s ready to swallow them whole.

“It’s just rain,” I call out to them, a bit of egg hangin’ out of my mouth. Sorry. I know better than that. I swallow it down. “You ain’t gonna melt.” 

Now I’ve seen a few things, and I’ve felt a little more, but there ain’t nothing in this life coulda prepared me for the way their faces looked. Empty-like. Hollow. Like something came up to them and sucked all the good parts of the world right out of ‘em.

And then they look back at the rain.


	2. bad ideas in bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drabble; R; fluff, smut; Scully x Reyes; Prompt: “It’s called a prank.”

Dana Scully doesn’t back down from an argument, no matter the situation.

“I just don’t think it’s a good idea,” she sighs. The mussed head bobbing between her heads lifts and Monica’s smiling patiently, her pretty mouth slick with spit and, well, Scully. 

“It’s called a prank,” she says laughingly. The vibration makes Scully a little crazy. “April Fools is coming up.”

“Yeah – but _Skinner_? He’s not going to find it…” she trails off to watch Monica’s elegant hand travel over her stomach and caress the side of her aching breast. “He’s not going to find it funny.”  
  
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him laugh,” Monica admits. The conversation dims. Scully doesn’t want to think about Skinner when Monica is doing _that_  with her teeth. Her head lolls back to the pillow and if Monica gives her just a few more moments with that skillful, practiced tongue, she will rocket to –

That lovely brown head pops up again, sporting a furrowed brow and thoughtful frown. Scully’s going to kill her. “I’m just surprised John agreed to help.”

Oh – Christ. Scully doesn’t want to think about John, either. Maybe if she refuses to indulge in this silly conversation, Monica will use her fingers to… but no, Scully can’t let it go either. Her eyes slam shut.  
  
“Agent Doggett would do anything you asked him to, Agent Reyes. He’d probably even buy the tin-foil.”  
  
“Call me that again, Agent Scully.”  
  
“ _Special_ Agent Monica Reyes.”

No more talking. Not until they’re flushed and sated and relishing the scent of each other’s hair – and then it’s only a matter of minutes before they’re decidedly not talking, again.

(And Scully ends up being right, Skinner doesn’t find it funny. Maybe the glitter-glue was overkill.)


	3. el chupacabra lives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drabble; PG; fluff; Scully x Reyes; Prompt: “Excuse me for falling in love with you!”

They don’t fight all that often because Monica has got this face, and this voice, and this thing she does with her tongue that makes Scully forget everything they’re arguing about.  
  
But this is too much.  
  
“It’s not a dog,” she seethes steadily. She’s partly furious because this is all bringing back some tragic memories of the ill-fated Queequeg. “We can’t keep it.”

Monica’s petting the thing on its awful head, regardless of its total lack of fur. “Just because it’s ugly doesn’t mean it’s not a dog.”  
  
But it’s clearly not a dog, not with its glowing yellow eyes (”Jaundice?” Monica supplies) or the giant, bony protrusions in its upper back (”Wings,” Scully hisses, but Monica says it’s spinal dysplasia), or, most importantly, the extremely worrying reality that they found this creature gnawing on a dead goat in the middle of the road. Monica frowns and says he’s just hungry and look, he seems to like brown rice and ground turkey just fine.  
  
“You don’t even believe in el chupacabra,” she reminds Scully. This just makes her angrier.  
  
“I’m not _saying_  it’s a chupacabra.”  
  
“But what is it if it’s not a dog?”  
  
Something about this conversation is too familiar to her. She left monster chasing behind years ago. Without either of them meaning to, the argument escalates in the way they often do when you love someone enough.  
  
At its climax, Monica tearily exclaims: “Excuse me for falling in love with you!” 

The women fall silent while the creature brays out an ominous, wind-like sound. A can of tuna falls out of the pantry and rolls across the floor, but it goes unnoticed. 

“That was a little dramatic,” Monica admits. Scully nods.  
  
Then they’re bursting out in clear, pretty laughter, falling into each other’s embrace, and Monica offers to do that thing with her tongue, and if all the food mysteriously disappears from the fridge tomorrow, along with the creepy dog, neither of them will have to guess why. 


	4. how to dig your own grave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for @xfficchallenges dialogue only challenge; pg; MSR implied; angst; season 8 spoilers; Mulder runs some errands in Raleigh, North Carolina.

“We try to be simple here, you know. Understated.”

“That’s one way to do it.”

“It’s all become such a flashy experience and I gotta tell you, it’s a little off-putting. This is supposed to be your resting place.”

“But my coffin is bigger than your coffin.”

“Very funny, sir. It’s good to see you hanging on to your sense of humor during what must be a very trying time in your life. Now, what is it you’re looking for? You need to get it right.”

“Understated. A resting place.”

“Well I’ve got just the thing. Look over here: solid walnut. Nothing more classic or comfortable.”

“I’m not sure comfort is a good angle for you.”

“Well we don’t know too much about the dead or what they want, I’d say. All I know is if I had my choice I’d spend eternity crawling back into bed with my wife at night. This is the next best thing.”

“Some people believe there are ways to find out what the dead want.”

“And what does your loved one want, Mr. Hale?”

“To not die.”

“Mr. Hale…”

“Understated. A resting place.”

“You know, it takes a lot out of a man to do this for a person. That’s why I like this job. People think it’s morbid and it probably is, just a little. But I find it a testament to the resilience of humanity and our devotion to one another.”

“Are you as talkative with your other customers?”

“Well they’re not quite so good at responding.”

“I… need to sit down. I shouldn’t be doing this. This isn’t right. I shouldn’t be giving up.”

“Wouldn’t you want somebody to do this for you, Mr. Hale?”

“…”

“Mr. Hale?”

“Understated. A resting place. What else you got?”

“We got Norwich Pine over here, elegant, simple and better for the environment.”

“The whole concept of a cemetery is directly at odds with that statement. I mean we might as well just be buried in mass unmarked graves or burned if we want to save the environment. But we get attached. There are treaties and rituals regarding death in every single culture, each one more extravagant and nuanced and steeped in mysticism than the next. Six hundred thousand years ago the Neanderthals were burying their dead with blunt tools and fashionable bones.”

“I thought I was spooky.”

“Ha.”

“I guess we just need to know where we’re at. Gotta keep each other safe. Would you rather be buried in nothing? Knowing there’s no way your people could find you?”

“I don’t want the pine.”

“What would you want to see them in?”

“I don’t follow.”

“Your last glimpse of a person. One you love a whole lot. What would you want to see them in?”

“…”

“Take your time, Mr. Hale.”

“That sign over there says cherry poplar.”

“Prettiest shade of red you’d ever seen in your life.”

“Let me see it.”


	5. stoicism as an art

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For @txf-fic-chicks missing scene challenge; Drabble; PG-13; MSR (eh bordering on friendship) with Dad Friend Skinner; Humor; Skinner invites Mulder and Scully out for drinks after they try to save his ass

  
Everything is planned out to the last detail. Someone is going to admit to a goddamned paranormal experience tonight and it is not going to be him. If you were to tell Fox Mulder that there would be a time in his life where he’d be surrounded by people who were even more brooding and repressed than himself, he would’ve laughed and laughed and laughed and started yelling about his sister. Repression is his corner of the market. Except it’s… sort of not, anymore.  **  
**

This is going to happen even though it means sitting through the most awkward night of his life. And it is, do not doubt him on that. Even the warped, boundless depths of his sick imagination could not have come up with this. His penchant for self-abuse only extends so far. 

Having drinks with your boss and coworker should not be this mortifying. But it really, really is.  
  
***

First, no one talks but him. What is the point of going out for drinks if no one talks? Even when he goes out by himself he talks to the bartender, at least. He used to hit on girls but that was when he was suave and brainwashed and all of the horrific shit he’d gone through had been buried deep, deep inside. Now it’s all on the surface and the only girl who’ll talk to him is Scully, and if he hits on her she’ll shoot him with either her apoptotic stare or her big ol’ FBI gun. He’s not sure what would turn him on more. He could try Skinner, but could Mulder really handle that kind of rejection?  
  
***

And then there’s of course the fact that they’re both drinking him under the table. Which is the point of all of this, anyway, but they’d be crushing him even if he had decided to go all in. Scully slams back her vodka and cranberry like she wants to be drinking something else, is taking the mild route to assuage their fear of her being some kind of closet alcoholic. Her display does nothing of the sort.

And Skinner with his scotch whiskey and faraway stare. If he’s drunk Mulder can’t tell. What if Skinner’s always drunk? He almost turns to ask Scully this, but then remembers Skinner is right there.

***

“So, Skinman,” Scully breaks the silence hilariously. But it’s certainly not on purpose. She is _drunk._ Mulder is dying on the inside, trying not to laugh. What the fuck. She wasn’t supposed to let Skinner know they call him that. “What’s the occasion?”

Skinner folds his arms on the bar in characteristic film noir seriousness, staring hard ahead. The barman pours him another J & B. “You guys put your necks on the line… for my career.” Not ‘for me,’ Mulder notes morosely. Skinner really is more repressed than him.  
  
Scully snorts. “Are you kidding? This is the best case we’ve had in ages. I’m so damn _sick_ of _aliens_.”  
  
Mulder glares at her. Suddenly she’s not so funny.  
  
***

“So, Scully,” Mulder says casually. He’ll be sly about this. She won’t even know he’s questioning her. “There’s a case coming up that is very similar to yours and other’s we’ve seen in the files. We have to leave as soon as Skinner signs off on it.” Skinner groans. “I want you to look over the file, first, let me know if the notes at all remind you of your experience.”  
  
“I wasn’t fucking abducted by aliens.”  
  
***  
  
“Skinner, Walter. I know you’re scared. I know that you think no one will believe you, that you’re crazy. But you know I’ll listen. What aren’t you telling me?”  
  
“Does he ever shut up?” Skinner asks Scully. She sucks at the last dredges of liquor from her empty glass and the sound is annoying as hell. She shakes her head no.  
  
***  
  
Mulder will repress this for years. 


	6. six times gibson praise read mulder’s mind, 1 time he read gibson’s

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for @leiascully's "lists" challenge; standalone; NC-17; Angst & Fluff; MSR; Season 9 spoilers; warnings for suicide ideation; Life in New Mexico with Gibson and Mulder.

**i. When Mulder First Arrives**

  
New Mexico is hot hot hot as hell I can’t stand it there is sweat in places there really shouldn’t be no wonder why they keep all the weird shit here why would Gibson hide out here, why not an all-inclusive resort in Fiji –   
  
“Because nobody needs me out here,” Gibson shrugs upon opening the door. Mulder hadn’t knocked.

  
  

**ii. The Morning After**

  
God she was so beautiful when I last saw her so vibrant I couldn’t fuck her I died and came back to life and I still couldn’t get laid her tits are gigantic now and I think she’d let me do it if I were there c’mon Mulder c’mon Fox nope that’s still weird c’mon Mulder I want it I miss you I love you I want your huge cock between my tits press them together Scully lick it a little oh god I love you I love you I love you.   
  
He’d been careful, he’d been _so careful_. He’d waited until four o’clock in the goddamn morning to just jerk off but Gibson can’t look him in the eye the next day.   
  
“You shouldn’t have listened to that,” Mulder says darkly, plating up some runny scrambled eggs and sliding them over on the table. Gibson probably makes them better but there’s just something about being taken care of by a boy with no chest hair that makes you feel like a failure.  
  
“Do you think I _wanted_  to?” Gibson squawks, voice cracking like a mouse. Mulder knows better than to make fun of it. Kids never recover from stuff like that. “She’s a mom. You’re a pervert.”  
  
Mulder feels absurdly defensive. “Hey, there’s a huge market for that. Tells me I’m not alone.”   
  
“Degenerate,” Gibson hisses, blushing from scalp to scapula.  


 

**iii. In the Night**

  
My mom used to do this when I was eight and it made me feel better even though she was bony as hell and turned into a huge bitch and Gibson is probably too old for this but what do I do don’t cry I mean go ahead and cry it’s the millennium for chrissake I cry I cry a lot you hear me right Gibson you hear my nightmares I’m sorry man oh god snot is disgusting shit no sorry

  
“Damn it Mulder, don’t you ever shut up?” Gibson sniffs, burrowing his face in Mulder’s collar. Mulder rocks them both gently.  
  
  


**iv. During an Episode**

  
What do you know Gibson TELL ME god fucking damn it I gave up my _son_  you need to tell me right now you fucking FREAK what do you know what’s in your head you have the answers I need the answers   
  
“I am not a pet Mulder!” The boy covers his ears like he has any chance of stopping it. Mulder can’t even stop it. “It’s not fair!” He shrieks. “I didn’t ask for this! It’s not goddamned fair!”   
  


 

**v. Under the Stars**

  
This kid has good aim I wonder how he’s probably cheating is it really cheating though can you cheat at catch oh well what teenage boy doesn’t have a good right arm –   
  
“Why are you like this?” Thwack. Gibson throws the ball a little too hard and Mulder cusses into the starry night.  
  
William is he going to have a good arm of course he is look at his mother she shot me in the arm look at me what does he look like now does he realize that stuff still exists when he can’t see it yet hell his mom doesn’t does he have my nose I kind of hope he does my kid my boy no one will ever wonder –   
  
Gibson tosses the ball in the sand somewhere, storms into his trailer and slams the door behind him. To the extent that he could. It sort of just shuts with a loud _puff_. 

Mulder sighs and follows him, opening the door and standing awkwardly in the frame. “What’s wrong, Gibs?”   
  
“I’m not your son,” Gibson’s voice is testy, muffled by the couch cushion he’s shoving his face against. Mulder feels pretty damn rotten. “And you’re not my dad. I had a dad too, you know. I’d rather be with him too.”

“I know you do,” Mulder chokes, sucking in a ragged breath. Tentatively he joins Gibson on the couch, lays a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder. “But I’m glad we’re with each other.”   
  
  


   
**vi. In the Night, Again**

  
Not worth it. This wasn’t worth it. I can stop this. I can end this all right now. I will go far into the mountains so Gibson won’t be the one who finds me. I’ll write her one last email. And then it will be finally, blessedly over. I will never make anyone feel like this again. One bullet. That’s all I’ll need. I’ll leave the rest with him, just in case he might need it. They’ll be alright. They’ll be better, even. You can do this, Fox. You can do this for them.   
  
He opens the door without turning on the lights, and he can’t imagine what he must look like to Gibson in only the light of the moon, unshaved and unhinged. He tries to soften his face, finds it hard as steel.  
  
Gibson’s mouth wobbles and he shakes his head in desperation. “I think about it too, Mulder,” he says in a small voice. “But you can’t do it either.”  
  
They stay up the whole night watching reruns of _I Love Lucy._

 _“_ Redheads,” Mulder sighs dreamily. Gibson smacks him with a pillow.  
  
  
  
  
**i. At the End**

  
They sit together in his cell, hugging their knees. Mulder hadn’t wanted Gibson to visit, hadn’t wanted to scar him any further. 

In Gibson he sees the boy he once tried so hard to be and the boy he’d actually been. In a few years, the pudgy, morose teenager will be buff, violent and beyond trigger-happy, but he’ll be tender, too, and he’ll cry and fall in love and one day forget how everyone tried make him their savior.   
  
“You can’t do this anymore, Gibson,” he says into the dark. Gibson doesn’t reply.   
  
He continues. “It’s not your responsibility. It never was.” He rolls his cheek to rest on his palm and looks at the child, watches him glare at nothing in the corner. “Get away from here. Find your parents. Move on.”  
  
“They’re probably dead,” Gibson spits.  
  
“Mine too,” Mulder replies easily. “Find someone else’s parents. I have Skinner.“  
  
“He wants to bang your girlfriend.”  
  
“Watch your mouth. I’m serious, Gibs.”  
  
“Fox.”  
  
“Listen to me.” Mulder tugs at him so they’re finally facing each other, mirroring teary-eyed and red faced. “It doesn’t matter. None of this matters. _You_  matter, your _life_ matters. Get out of here and go live it.”  
  
I don’t want to die.  
  
I know. 


	7. skinner looks at scully

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> drabble; pg-13; one-sided scully/skinner; ust, humor; somewhere post-Avatar; Skinner doesn’t understand his life. Was prompted for Skinner/Scully UST.

“Can you see him?”  
  
“Not in my line of vision, sir.”  
  
Walter Skinner has a weird life. Weird things happen to him, and he’s done some weird things. He’d like to blame it all on Spooky Mulder with his puppy bark and bad haircuts. _That_  guy is a goddamn disaster. But it’s not just that – that’s just too easy. He doesn’t tend to go easy on anything. The problem is definitely himself. He’s old and bald now, divorced. His name labels a folder in the X-Files. Yes, his biceps are huge and he can assemble an M-16 faster than most. But what is _happening_ to him?  
  
Right now he’s kevlar to kevlar with Special Agent Dana Scully, who smells like gunpowder and something strange and anti-septic, like hospital ointment. Formaldehyde? Did she do an autopsy before this? He didn’t authorize one. Hell, she probably did it anyway. Insubordination is her new thing. She would’ve been a good agent if she hadn’t been shoved in the basement.

But she cut into a person with her small hands to prove his innocence, defended him to OPR without a second thought. That kind of loyalty could bring a man to his _knees_ if overexposed. It’s humbling. Awe-inspiring. He’s not sure what he did to deserve it, but perhaps more pressingly he’s not sure how Agent Mulder stands it. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe something’s going on Skinner doesn’t want to know about.  
  
All of the sudden she shouts “We’ve got him!” and spills out of the electric closet with her superior close on her tail. The suspect runs quickly so she sidesteps him and rolls on her shoulder to greet him in the corner of the rooftop, where he’s trapped and violent in his pissiness. He screams at her, she screams at him, and he’s all cuffed up and pouting by the time Skinner’s even rounded the corner. Skinner is grim-faced and half-hard as they usher the suspect into the building.  
  
Why was that so attractive?  
  
What is _happening_  to him?


	8. the loneliest gunman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> drabble; pg-13; Mulder/Scully & The Lone Gunmen; fluff, mild angst; season 7, pre-Millenium; prompt - “One drink and we go home, I swear."

He’d crossed into a parallel universe. Demonic possession, but the demon was giggly and tired after a long day of damning souls. Mind control, but by whom? And why do this? A malfunction in the chip, and they’d have to get her checked out in the morning. It wasn’t actually her, but a spirit summoned to take her place while the real Scully did Hades’ bidding in the underworld. He had to go find her. She hated the heat.  
  
“One more drink and we’ll go home.” Her pouty face looked particularly uncomfortable to wear, like slipping on a pair of jeans that didn’t fit anymore. But it warmed him a little anyway. “I swear.”

The trigger-shy gunmen all nervously avoided his accusing stare. Tipsy, red-faced and moving in synchronized clumsiness,  they went about cleaning up their mess, dropping beer bottles in the little recycling bin and boxing up the leftover pizza he couldn’t even imagine her eating. They never cleaned up for him.  
  
He’d come over for some information. Things had been tense ever since the little Mexican Standoff he and Scully had subjected them to, the Great Diana Debate™ as he’d termed in his head. But she was dead now and he figured the boys would show him a little sympathy. Apparently not. 

So pissed, so irrationally bitter he’d been that of _course_  they’d take Scully’s side over his, it meant she’d be nicer to them in their jerkoff fantasies. They were _his_  friends. Bros before hoes. Whatever happened to loyalty?

But things were different now, with Mulder channeling all of his energy into not kissing her and recuperating from traumatic brain surgery. She was nicer to him in his jerkoff fantasies, too, especially when they started with her carefully changing out his head bandages. He got the appeal and he had it in him to forgive. But this…

Scully remained blissfully unaware of all the musky, male posturing positively drowning the room, scooping up the little M-shaped controller and resuming Monkey Ball with a practiced ease. 

“Hey!” Langly snapped quickly, dropping the Dawn bottle in the sink and rushing to join her on the couch. With soapy hands he grabbed the other controller and shot a fizzy look at her. “ _Cheater_.”

“I was kicking your ass, _Ringo_ ,” she taunted. “I don’t need to cheat.”

If Scully really was in another dimension, how would he find her? He imagined standing in the shadow of her tesseract, one Scully nesting inside another, inside another, while he tried desperately to pull one of them back. This wasn’t all that different, he supposed. Time to phone up Bill Nye.

With Langly distracted and Byers being so damnably intelligent, it was Frohike who made first eye contact. His face reflected the misery of a dying man. Mulder stared at him hard. 

“Melvin,” he said evenly. The little man’s shoulders slumped as he untied his apron, balled it up, and gallows-walked with Mulder to the next room.  
  
“How long?” Mulder demanded, spinning around to cup Frohike’s shoulders menacingly. He really did feel like the jilted wife. But who was screwing him over?

 Frohike tensed visibly but his face went dark. “You know when,” he muttered gruffly, wriggling out of Mulder’s hold. So Scully was the husband, then. Go figure. “She came back that day you got the files back.” 

“And you thought what?” Flippant and blank-faced, he leaned down to troll height. “We’ll just ply her with alcohol? Fucking investigator with the FBI Fox Mulder won’t find out?”  
  
“Screw you,” Frohike hissed. His comically wide eyes filled with Christmas lights, the ones they’d hung around the computers and their industrial sized printer. He looked like a Christmas elf. “You _know_  it wasn’t like that. _She_  came over _here_. _She_ was the one who plopped down on the couch and snatched Byers’ beer right out of his hands. We all stared at her like she told us that the _Titanic_  was planned.”  
  
“It was,” Mulder said tightly.

“ _We_  know that, but coming from her it’d be pretty shocking.” 

After spending many a night in the gunmen’s dank little bachelor hovel, Mulder tried to ascertain what appealed to her. Three tiny men, covered in grease and yelling all night about the Phantom Time Hypothesis. Burping and looking up bizarre porn on the web, seeing who’d be forced to throw up first. That was his idea of a good time, at least it used to be. But Scully?  
  
Scully, floating in space at right angles at right angles. Mulder, cowing in her forever shadow. 

“What do you guys even do?” He tried not to look disappointed or jealous. When anger left him he always felt so naked. On him it was just as necessary as pants. 

Frohike’s voice went oddly gentle as he searched Mulder over with conspiracy-tuned eyes. “Most of the time we drink and order pizza,” he said slowly. “We play video games. We tried to do movie nights but none of us could hold our own when she started arguing the science.” He held Mulder’s gaze pointedly. “You could tell she was bored out of her pretty little mind. But she was lonely, man.” 

Something settled in Mulder then, and he looked back to the room where Scully was cussing Langly out. Byers laughed suddenly, actually laughed. “She never plays video games with me.” 

Frohike mumbled something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like ‘you fucking idiot, the both of you, _Feds_ , I can’t believe it–,’ before dragging Mulder to their kitchenette.   
  
“Grab a beer,” he instructed, shoving the taller man at the fridge with more force than necessary. “Get one for her, too. She likes the craft stuff on the bottom shelf. Expensive date.” And he wandered back to the den, Mulder trailing nervously on his heel. 


	9. not another undercover marriage gig

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drabble; PG; Fluff; Season of Secret Sex (references Arcadia); prompt “Am I your husband or your taxi service?"

“Am I your husband or your taxi service?”  
  
“You took the only car!” She hisses. Then she sniffs daintily: “And you’re neither. If anything, you’re the cabana boy.”  
  
“Scully,” he puffs out, surprised. “Am I doing a good job, then?”  
  
“Evaluations are next week.”  
  
They’re on another husband-and-wife undercover gig, because someone at the Bureau has a sick sense of humor. Skinner. Skinner has a sick sense of humor. He picked out the rings himself and then warned them this probably wasn’t an X-File. 

Scully’s still not sure the last one was an X-File, either, except for how good Mulder looked in polo shirts and that silly haircut. Hmm… 

“Peso for your thoughts,” Mulder cuts into her reverie.   
  
Pressing the phone close to her ear, she knows the smile radiates through her  voice. “I’m actually thinking about Arcadia.”  
  
“Are you now?” he draws in that seductive voice, the one he had tried to use on Mrs. Petrie in that cookie-cutter house. “Laura?”  
  
“And about how insufferable you were.”

“Hey, you suffered me fine.” He pauses. “You did hate me a little.”

“Who’s to say that’s changed?”  
  
“Scully, a hateful person doesn’t put their mouth where you –”  
  
“Mulder!”

“Alright, alright,” he surrenders. There’s a rustling in the background that sounds like fast-food trash and evidence bags. Oh, lord. “I just picked up those results while you were scouting out that P.T.A. meeting. No one poisoned those bake sale muffins, Scully. No word on the brownies, though, they sold out too fast to get a sample.”  
  
“Don’t read and drive, Mulder.”  
  
“Need your husband back in one piece?”  
  
“I need the taxi driver wholly in tact.”


	10. le coeur noir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> drabble; rated r; dana scully/diana fowley; missing scene-Amor Fati; Diana Fowley isn’t really dead, and Dana Scully isn’t really sure what she’s doing.

“I’m sure you have questions,” she says, leaning back slowly against the counter. Steam rolls off of her, droplets of water cling to shoulders. It’s hard not to notice how very much of her there is, at all angles. Sometimes you need to look at a thing several different times, reposition it, to understand it looks better in a specific light. **  
**

She likes Diana better in the dark.

Is this how she had done it, all those years ago, gotten Mulder into her bed? A poorly lit motel room, a file falls to the floor. And so does her towel, and his eyes… Scully shivers.

Diana unwraps a towel from her hair and it falls; the color change is so slight you might miss it from the back, but the lighter shade changes her face completely. It’s softer, more open, and several layers of deceit are stripped from her features. Or maybe she just really, really hates Diana.

“Why me?” Scully asks, and it’s the least important question, and maybe the only one she has the guts to voice out loud.

“I don’t keep many acquaintances,” Diana replies. She studies the other agent curiously, slowly combing her fingers through her long hair. Then, like an afterthought: “I knew you’d do it.”

An odd thought crosses her – one she’ll later discount on gut instinct, with no concrete evidence to back it up. This is the first time Diana Fowley has looked at her, really looked at her. And she understands this in the most literal of terms. There’s nothing prosaic or particularly soul searching in Diana’s stare. It is only the physical act. Part of her aggression – the months spent in that special hell of loathing a person wholly, without reprieve – perhaps stemmed from this, from her ability to make Scully feel three feet tall with just a look. Or a lack of one.

“Mulder would’ve done it. He knows what it means to make the sacrifice you did.”   
  
Diana raises an eyebrow. Scully doesn’t watch her smooth lotion down her arms and legs, and she doesn’t try to pick up the lovely, expensive scent. “Mulder,” Diana tests it, draws it out with her tongue, smiles with slight pleasure at the way it makes Scully wince. She continues with her head tucked to her chest as she hikes up her towel a little to lotion up her thighs. “He’s not so forgiving as you’d think.”

It’s ridiculous she wants to protect him, even as she damns him straight to hell. “You underestimate him,” she says archly, stopping herself from crossing her arms. “I’m sure he had an inkling what you were up to. He just didn’t want to believe it.”  
  
Diana looks faintly amused. “Fox is well endowed, in many respects. I would not consider his insight into women as one of them.”  
  
What Scully would give to have Cancer Man on speed dial, so she may call him up and sic him on Diana right then and there. She doesn’t need to know about Mulder’s endowments. “He would’ve forgiven you. You saved his life.”   
  
Diana doesn’t roll her eyes, per se, but keeps them quite level, and the effect is just the same. “You underestimate him,” she says. It’s cold. Her voice, the room. A tingle starts at the base of Scully’s spine and travels as Diana’s body steps further into the solitary light of the room, that of the moon.  
  
This is something Scully never understood about women, how they’ll just undress in front of you like it’s no big deal. Locker rooms, girl scout trips, collegiate dormmates; Scully would be saying something, or flipping through a book, and all of the sudden a shirt lifts, blue jeans fall to the floor. She never looked. Not at the swell of a breast peeking out over the edge of a bra, or the sweet curve of a hip spilling into pretty, shapely legs, or leading up to smooth stomachs and a pinched waistline.  
  
Diana’s towel drops, but Scully can’t bring herself to look away. She’d made a few catty comments about cleavage and casual Friday and spinal stenosis. But the real thing is a bit more daunting, the way they hang and rise up just so, the surprising roundness of her brown nipples. Her eyes continue downward, to the her thick thighs, the dark thatch of hair between her legs. The colors are all faded, the lights are all off, and the woman before her isn’t really real, not according to the death certificate, the lie she’s entrusted Scully with.   
  
The older woman is looking at her again, and the lines on her face are back. Scully used to want to smack them off of her, still kind of wants to. She also wants to smooth them over with her fingers, mold her into the shape she took in the dark. A moment passes, Diana standing perfectly still. 

“We had so much in common, Fox and I.” It’s not wistful, not in the least. It is matter of fact, and Scully can’t bring herself to feel the customary anger at her flaunting. “I think you know that.”  
  
She can’t be actually sure. Diana Fowley does a lot of things Fox Mulder couldn’t ever bring himself to do. Love, and lie, and lie to the people he loves. Hurt them, on purpose, knowing that the result only benefits so little. But Scully nods. Diana sits next to her on the bed, not bothering with clothes or rewrapping the towel.  
  
“So much in common.” And then, she kisses her, fingers wrapped tight around her jaw. Their lips move together, and Diana’s fingers feel out the slope of her shoulders. It’s soothing. It stops her from bolting.

Scully never wondered what Diana would taste like, what she would kiss like. She’d imagined how she’d wear a black eye or what her teeth would look like scattered on the floor.   
  
Diana tastes like a spy, like she’ll be reporting this later. To who, Scully doesn’t know. Everyone Diana knows will forget she ever existed.

Diana kisses like it’s something she isn’t supposed to do. Like she isn’t supposed to kiss anyone. Maybe this is true.

Scully kisses back.


	11. friendly competition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> drabble; pg-13; msr; fluff, ust; season 3; Mulder & Scully engage in a push-up contest.

“One-hundred and fourteen,” she says with a proud smile.

He gives her a quick once-over, cooly assessing her from tiny head to tiny toe, and shakes his head.

“I don’t believe you.”

The redness that floods her face is obscenely gratifying. He’s seen her look at grainy photos of the Flatwoods monster with less disbelief and indignation.

“You think you can do better?” she snaps, and in a motion that will come to haunt a few of his most confusing dreams, she shucks her suit jacket onto the floor and starts rolling her sleeves up to her elbows. “You’re on!”

***

“Should someone be keeping score?”  
  
Scully huffs and rolls her eyes. “Who, A.D. Skinner? I bet he’d love to see what his favorite department does on the clock.”  
  
“He’d probably join us.”

“That’d be no fun. He would definitely win.” 

They are able to make enough room by pushing the project closer to the doorway and the chairs against the wall. The fit is still a little tight and body heat replaces bubbles of personal space as they kneel side by side on the floor.  
  
“We need rules,” she says primly.  
  
“None of those girly push-ups, Scully. We do this like men.”

“I am choosing not to report you to H.R. because I’m worried about what will happen to you when you’re fired. Where will you find a shopping cart when you’ve never been in a grocery store?” She settles onto her calves and runs her hands up and down her thighs. “But I agree. We remain in perfect form. Elbows locked. Knees not touching the floor. Chests two inches from the ground. No breaks.”  
  
“We keep our own count.”  
  
She arches an eyebrow. “Do you trust me?”  
  
“Of course,” he says simply.  
  
***

“Are you wearing a skirt?” he wheezes. The memory of her bending over this morning to retrieve a file flashes hot in his mind during push-up sixty three. 

She hisses raggedly. “Shut up and count, Mulder.” Returning to her rigorous little navy cadence, “Down, up, down, up…”

He knows she’s moving faster than him and plans for it to be her downfall. A niggling strain has settled in his lower back and thighs and he knows it’s got to be worse for her.

“Down, up, down, up, seventy-five, seventy-six…” 

His lungs are screaming and he sort of wishes he could watch her, the rising, sleek line of her back, the flexing of her compact little biceps. There’s more strength in her than either of them realize at times, especially when she goes to teasingly sock him and he has to rub the spot and grimace as soon as she turns away.

Oh, screw it. He flops down on the linoleum and props up on his elbow to watch her work.

She’s at ninety-four now, and at this point he’s sure he would’ve lost anyway. She’s still going strong. The sweat dripping down her back forces her baggy button-down to cling to more flatteringly to her skin, and he notices immediately how she solved her skirt problem. He watches a little dazedly as the rolled hem-line slides up and down her thighs with each descent. She has muscle there, tightly coiled and then relaxed, down, up, down, up –   
  
“Mulder!” She comes to a complete stop and scrabbles to roll onto her back to sit up. Her skirt rides a little higher on her thighs and her face blooms with confused anger. “Why didn’t you tell me you were out? I won!”

He just looks at her. Right in the face. They do this sometimes, an unsettling acknowledgement of what will probably never be. It’s an exercise in temptation and restraint that would impress the monks. His eyes are dark, bottomless, and hers work to quickly catch up as she takes sight of his damp, heaving chest, the bead of sweat overhanging that curved upper lip.

They stay like this until it’s not really fun anymore, until it kind of hurts and matches the ache in their hips and their forearms. Mulder breaks first after Scully licks her lips to stop them from drying.

“You won,” he concedes mildly. Standing up is a process. The cracks of too many bones make him wince and breathe out a crazed laugh. “I must be getting old.”

“Navy brat,” Scully offers. She stands up and hastily smooths out her rumpled clothes. If Mulder had been looking, he would have caught a glimpse of her beige bra through an open button. But he is looking determinedly at one of the only blank spots on the wall, willing himself to calm down. “You can buy me lunch as reward for kicking your ass.”

He reluctantly lets himself turn back to face her, relieved to find her mostly put back together and at ease. Her face is still a little red. There are a few flyaway hairs he wants to tuck back into her ponytail.  But he just rolls his eyes and makes to grab his coat.  
  
“Maybe I let you win,” he goads while holding the door open for her. She punches the arm over her head as she ducks beneath it, and yes, it hurts a little.


	12. be-wedded outlaw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drabble; NC-17; Fluff & Smut; post-Season 9, on the run; Prompt - “You’re an idiot. I married an idiot.”

“You’re an idiot,” he says happily, licking a wide stripe down the jumping column of her throat. He pushes the straps of her white sundress over her shoulders and swoops down to nibble on her collarbone. “I married an idiot.”   
  
“We’re not actually married,” she reminds him, reaching back to unfasten her bra. This arches her back and makes her breasts brush up against him, eliciting a rumbled groan.

He ignores her by sliding his big hands under her dress to hook his thumbs into her cotton panties. They work together to ease them over her legs and it’s then decided that they’re not gonna even bother with the dress. The skirt bunches up around her waist and he pulls her tits out over the neckline to suck and rub his face against her nipples. “I can’t believe you married me. You’re an idiot,” he murmurs into her skin. 

“Not in any – oh _Mulder_  – church, or court of law.“ She yelps when he bites at her, writhing under his mouth. He soothes the ache by grinding the fleshy heel of his hand against her clitoris. 

“But Elvis knows, Scully,” he breathes into her ear. That first slide of him is going to haunt them both for years, it’s so good. They’re consummating their marriage in a dusty, wired town in northern Nevada, on a motel bed that’s probably seen many consummations just like theirs. “Elvis knows. That’s all that matters.”

And he kisses her the rest of the night, until nothing really matters. 


	13. scully punches a higher up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drabble; NC-17; MSR; Smut & Fluff; Season of Secret Sex; Mulder and Scully get thrown in a military prison.

No one hates being in jail more than Fox Mulder, who’d typically be foaming at the mouth and pounding at the bars right about now. But this is Scully’s fault, which makes all the difference, and now he can’t stop grinning at her like an idiot.  
  
“If you don’t stop your giggling, Mulder, I’m going to punch you too,” she threatens with closed eyes.  
  
“You punched the _Lieutenant Commander_ ,” he marvels dazedly. “You punched him _right in the face_.”

“I will cave your nose in like a saltine cracker.”  
  
“He was _crying_ , Scully.”  
  
“He was an _asshole,_  Mulder.”

“You were defending my honor.” He ignores the multitude of warning signs her tense body exudes and laces their fingers together. “And you know what?”

She sighs, finally resigning her self to a weekend of nothing but Mulder in this tiny little barracks cell. “What, Mulder?”  
  
“It really, really –” he traces the place where their fingers are joined with his other hand, “– Turns me on.”  
  
Her eyes snap open. She suddenly realizes they’re completely alone.   
  
***  
  
She doesn’t let him do too much because an M.P.O. could barge in on them at any second. But he’s always kind of liked it with their clothes on, anyway.  
  
The sparks of pain he elicits by sucking and licking at the tender parts of her bruised hand go straight to her clit, which he’s toying with, expertly, through her damp cotton panties. For a woman who’d been spitting and roaring with rage not only two hours ago, she certainly feels pretty tame right now. 

“You,” he mouths hotly into her ear, biting at the lobe just the way she likes it, “Are so, so bad, Scully.”  
  
“Mm’not,” she defends weakly. He shuts her up by yanking her underwear to the side and dragging his fingers through her wet heat.  
  
“Scully,” he admonishes. “ _I’ve_  never punched a Lieutenant Commander before, have I?”

With a few deliberate flicks of his thumb against her clit, she’s coming on his hand and opening her mouth in a silent scream. He rubs her through the aftershocks and brushes his smiling lips against her swollen knuckles.  
  
She climbs into his lap before she catches her breath, sporting a wicked little grin that causes his cock to surge underneath her.  
  
“That’s true, Mulder. But _I’ve_  never received oral sex in a military prison.” 


	14. unidentified flying fuck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drabble; PG-13; Humor; Post-Dreamland 1; prompt -- "Oh, what a shocker, you have an excuse."

She’s shot this man once before and it had been to save him from himself. If she shoots him again, it’ll be to save him from her, because a gaping wound in the head will be a sweet, gentle death in light of all the lovely things she wants to do to him now.  
  
Slapping her ass. 

Screwing the secretary.

_Possibly whistle-blowing their informant to the Bureau._

Something in her soul had withered at that last one, like watching your favorite baseball player succumb to syphilis and alcoholism. Is this it for Mulder? Is this his syphilitic end? Imagine if Jesus himself had smoked some poppy seeds and propositioned Mary Magdalene instead of saving the world on Calvary Hill. What a disappointment. What a damn shame. She can’t even masturbate to the thought of him anymore.

“Dana, I’m so, so sorry I’m late,” he pleads in that new, horribly saccharine tone he’s affected. If he’s apologizing for ditching her, please save it, Mulder, ditch her some more. Ditch her to die here pissed and forever unable to lubricate herself naturally.  “I know we were supposed to attend that security briefing together, but time got away from me.” His face twists into an ugly placating smile. “I bet Kersh is going to ream me until the next briefing!” 

She plays the harpy because he expects her to and if the real Mulder is really in there, maybe her shrill, argumentative tone will provide a tether.

“Oh, what a shocker,” she says dully, stabbing halfheartedly at her keyboard. “You have an excuse.”  
  
“Not an excuse, Dana. An explanation.” His puppy-dog eyes don’t even look like his puppy-dog eyes anymore. “There is no excuse.”  
  
Oh, Mulder, she thinks wistfully. You always have excuses. She yearns for the time she used to accept them.


	15. get your fix

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drabble; PG-13; Humor, UST; Season 5; A bad woman entices Mulder to do her bidding

She’d be laughing her ass off if she wasn’t so _scared_. Mulder won’t let go of the wrench and she’s holding a little old lady at gunpoint. How did this all happen?

“Stop trying to fix the sink, Mulder,” she demands through gritted teeth. He doesn’t. The older woman huffs out a laugh and rolls her eyes, urging Scully to straighten up her shooter’s stance.

“He won’t stop until it’s fixed,” replies the woman, not bothering to keep the boredom out of her voice. Her eyes fall on Mulder and she studies him gleefully. “And then he’s going to install my drape-runner.”  

Mulder curses when he turns the faucet too tight and water sprays at him from an angle. His head disappears back under the sink.

“He’s not going to install your drape-runner!” Oh god, she’s yelling. She sounds crazy. Is she crazy? What is _happening_  right now? “What did you do to him?”  
  
“The drug will wear off in about three hours. Just a simple serum.” The felony-committing blue-haired enemy raises her eyebrows reproachfully and nods at Scully’s gun. “Now, if you put that gun down, I can have the nice man fix us some tea and you can wait here until the sink is fixed. And my drape-runners are installed. Please,” she points to the chair next to her in invitation. “Stay awhile.” 

God help her, Scully does. What else can she do? Cuff the woman and drag a drugged, manic Mulder all over town? She lowers her weapon and perches on an armchair. She does not re-holster.

Her eyes follow the flex of the dimples in his lower back, the way his biceps jump and glisten under the strain. He’s grunting like an animal as he works that faucet. 

Everything is way too hot. Did the suspect have him fix the A.C.? Why not?  
  
“Does he have to be shirtless?” Scully asks shrilly.  
  
“Hey!” cries the woman, holding her hands to her chest defensively. “I did _not_  tell him to do that. He took it off himself.”  
  
The heated pair watch him in seething silence as he puts all his effort into fixing this sink. It’s amazing. She knows how deep his concentration runs and never thought to apply it to some average household chore. Other things besides government conspiracies for sure… but never housework.  
  
After he’s finished he rises up with a rumbling groan and wipes the sweat from his body with a kitchen towel. Scully watches rapturously as he drags the cloth over the indented vee of his hips and throws it to the floor. 

When his eyes fall on them, Scully is _floored_  by the intense look on his face. His eyes are completely devoid of color, overpowered by thrumming, bottomless pupils. His jaw sets ruggedly, clenching and unclenching with boundless energy. He looks helplessly between them and grunts out, “Fix.”

“Over here, dear.” The old woman shows him how to set up the drape-runner. 

While he works, Scully reasons she should at least investigate the crime. She is a federal agent. This is her job. Talking to the lady she finds that the superintendent of Mulder’s building has fallen a little behind on some maintenance duties. The woman, who introduced herself as May Ellen, needed to do something _quick_. Her grandchildren are visiting soon. She saw resident Fox Mulder, big, strong special agent man that he is, and knew he’d be perfect for the job. So she concocted a serum, a family recipe, you see –

Scully pretty much tunes her out after the initial introduction. Mulder’s tight ass glares at her every time he bends down to pick up a different tool and she can’t stop thinking about giving it a nice smack to see it jiggle under her palm. Those sweatpants hide nothing. If he turns around, maybe she’ll see –

Oh, he’s finished. He rubs his hands together triumphantly when the blinds flip at the press of a button.  
  
The woman hollers delightedly as she checks over his handwork, slapping his back with a satisfied grin. Turning to Scully and clasping her hands, her face twitches with false benevolence.  
  
“He’s all yours! Fox, dear, help your friend Ms. Scully. Fix what needs to be fixed.”   
  
Oh no. He rounds on her like a bloodhound and pitifully asks, “Fix?” 

In the car he’s restless, but at least he’s got a shirt on. He leans over her stereo and plays with the dials until he knows for sure it’s in full working order. It’s not until he cups his strong hand between her legs and throatily asks,  _“Fix?”_ that Scully realizes she might lose control over the situation if she doesn’t act fast.  
  
She takes him home to figure out what’s wrong with her garbage disposal. 


	16. wrap around

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drabble; PG; Fluff; Set post-Three Little Words/pre-Empedocles; What changed between Mulder’s calm detachment in Three Little Worlds and his almost overbearing behavior in Empedocles? Was prompted for pregnancy fluff.

It takes her a little while to figure out what he’s up to because he disguises everything so _damn_ well under the litany of personality flaws he exhibits on a daily basis. She knows Mulder, clingy, one-track, obsessive _Mulder,_ always knocking down each lead in his lifelong match of alien invasion dominoes, always foiling the plot, and so if he’s doing everything he’s always done, why should she think anything different? **  
**

This is why she doesn’t question his near-constant presence in her apartment. Why it doesn’t seem all that weird he drives to her place every morning to pick her up for work, even when he’s not supposed to be in that day. And they’ve always done the food thing. That’s just common courtesy when you interrupt someone at dinnertime. If he’s a little jumpier than normal, hopping off couches and rearranging pillows for no apparent reason, making them way too many cups of tea, calling her… a lot, for no good reason, it’s all just a throwback to the manic Mulder she knows and grudgingly loves.

There’s nothing at home for him, Kersh is keeping a close watch on the X-Files… so where else would he be?  
  
But the cat comes yowling out of the bag one early morning while he’s preparing them bagels and talking about, hell, probably super soldiers. She tunes him out. She talks about this all day at work. But he interrupts himself, loudly, and earns her full attention with a start.

“You can’t drink _that_ ,” he frowns. _Are you crazy?_ his eyes ask. Not typically, but she’s beginning to feel a little crazy with the way he’s disassembling her coffee pot and pouring the water back in the sink.

She looks down at the coffee grounds she was about to spoon into the paper filter. Decaf coffee grounds.

And then suddenly she knows.  
  
Mulder is trying to take care of her.

***

“I’m just a little confused,” she says slowly. It sure is difficult to talk to the rigid line of his back. She fights the urge to reach out and touch him because he’s been so excitable lately and she doesn’t want to be another thing that sets him off.

“Nothing to understand,” he monotones. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The pillows. The tea. You drive me to work every morning… you keep bringing me food.”  
  
“Well it’s been awhile since I’ve seen you, is all.” The resulting silence is all he needs to let him know that was a little uncalled for, and he amends: “You’re my best friend, Scully. Where else would I be?”  
  
It’s not the whole truth. If he can’t turn around and look at her in the eye, it’s not the whole truth. But she lets herself take a few steps forward to place her hand on his shoulder and quashes down the urge to cry when he rests his cheek upon it.

“The other day in your apartment,” her voice comes out wobbly, hesitant, but so hopeful his heart breaks a little. Her fingers squeeze around him tightly. “I wasn’t sure you wanted to be involved.”

He takes a deep, shuddering breath and turns around to face her. His eyes are too bright, the tick in his jaw pulses like mad. Oh, Mulder.

“Scully, do you ever have flashbacks of your abduction? Ones that… almost replace reality, they’re so vivid?”  
  
An anger surges in her at the question. Now is not the time to talk about the _aliens_. But she reads his look thoroughly before she chooses her next words and it all becomes clear to her.  
  
“You remember, don’t you?” His blank face falls a little under her gaze and he gives a jerky nod. “It’s not like mine. You remember everything.”

He takes hold of the hand on his shoulder to kiss the knuckles and tuck it in his own. His look is hard steel, the Truth itself, the one he gives her when he’s desperate to be understood.

“I can’t promise I’m going to be a good…” he trails off, and she understands his inability to say the word. For now, he doesn’t have to. “I will be dealing with this and everything else that’s happened to me, to _us_ , for the rest of my life.” Pressing another kiss to where their hands are joined, he sighs with closed eyes and mumbles into her wrist: “But there is not a life for me without you in it. Without both of you in it.”  
  
Tears leak from her eyes before she can think to stop them. She pulls him into a tight hug, mindful of the third party, and presses a deep, lingering kiss to his furrowed forehead.  
  
“Well then,” she breathes, pulling away and holding his face in her damp palms. “Why don’t you take the _both_ of us to my Lamaze appointment? And we can work out a better way to do this thing.”   
  
He falls comfortably back into her embrace.


	17. a woman shot dead in her apartment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> standalone; Diana Fowley, Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Diana/Mulder (light); pg-13; angst; Amor Fati-missing scene; She knows what sliding that key card under Agent Scully’s door means for her.

There is some uncertainty. The key card is now under the door, but it’s not done yet. She can pick the lock. It’s heavy, thick, good old Georgetown wood, but if she wanted it enough she could break the door down.   
  
She can take it back.

She could meet Agent Scully right outside the building. It’s dark enough. Just haul her off into the bushes; it would be quiet, merciful, too quick for her to fight back. And when they start looking there will be at least five exceptionally diverse men to take her place as the main suspect – they will be desperate, they will play their parts well. It will serve as the promotion they always wanted. And she’ll be whisked off to Peru, perhaps even France, to continue her research, the tracking – she’s almost come to miss it, even, the predictability. They were all just numbers on a screen, genetic codes, white blood cell counts and GPS coordinates; until, of course, they were not. Then they were martyrs, sacrificed for the greater good. She never got involved in all that. It hadn’t been in her job description.

It hits her now, and she is made uncomfortable by the realization that none of this mattered to her until it was personal. No one wants to know this about themselves. So she lets herself forget the people, and starts to find familiar comfort in the numbers.  
  
Forty-four. The click of her heels down the hall. The key is under the door. There is no uncertainty.

In the lab they poke and prod at him some more, and she finds herself staring down the clock and pursing her lips like there’s somewhere she’d rather be. A surgeon pulls her aside, scolds her like a child.  
  
“You need to concentrate.” His mask is so unlike her own; she can’t see the top half of his face. Not military, then. Someone someone knows. Outside of the lab he’s a family’s primary care physician. “We’re coming to the end. Our scannings tell us he’s still in deep but any agitation could pull him out.”   
  
His eyes are hidden. Maybe he’s glaring at her, he knows what she’s done. Or maybe he just pities her, knows about all the ladders she’d climbed just to end up six feet under. She feels annoyed. She turns her back on him briskly to stare hard at Fox Mulder, lying corpse-like on the operating table.

Where were they? It’s all a play on her uninspired girlhood fantasies; mapped out goals so boring and lifeless they eventually became unattainable to her. But she recognizes, distantly, the appeal. Children require fairy tales to ward off the nightmares. It seems to work on him. The lines on his face soften under her cool hand.

Last time he pulled her out of her negligee and made eager love to her – a little bit rough, as is his nature. It lasted until daylight filtered in through the curtains, and then she’d blown him to make up for tasing him practically mid-coitus three weeks before. Sorry, lover, could you ever forgive me? And then… if she remembers right, they got married. And had kids. Yes. Two kids and a dog. Neither of the children have his nose, but they have his sad eyes. The dog inherits the nose, and also the eyes.

Okay, part two.   
  
What kind of parents are they? She tells him. They are loving and attentive, because no one wants to be a bad parent. Their children are creative, ambitious to a fault and so very giving. In her head they are less like her and more like him, and that is just as well, because she cannot bring herself to love them, not really. Can he feel that? She can’t help it. She never wanted kids.

There is a little resentment that she has to weave this web to keep him under. The version of her she plants in his head is whitewashed, every bit the woman her mother taught her not to be. Can he feel that, too? He must know it’s not right.   
  
Betty Friedan rolls her eyes and Diana Mulder takes their children to soccer practice – Fox had been a tad disappointed, of course, until their daughter shows proclivity for basketball her second year of high school. There are piano lessons, scout meetings. What else? She kisses scraped knees, his and the children’s. Someone has a sexuality crisis; they deal with it well, deal with it kindly. The kids are brilliant. They go off to college, full ride, and neither of them have to pay a dime. Their retirement is comfortable. More than comfortable. It could be lavish, if that was what he wanted. But she knows that’s not his style, so she tells him more about the gigantic yard and how he tries to impress her with his handyman skills. How he fails every time.   
  
Samantha is suffering with her, too, another girl lost to the power play of broken men. Her kids, their kids. They play together and avoid each other like the plague when they start high school.   
  
A version of Morley Man shuttles a minivan full of fake children and fake grandchildren and fake great grandchildren to fake barbecues and fake graduations and more fake weddings. This version of Spender keeps his hands to himself and stays far away from eugenics.   
  
Are you happy here, Fox? She honestly can’t tell. She wants him to be. She thinks she remembers a time he actually was, before the regression therapy and the X-Files, right when they started dating. He’d been cocky and tried to act like he was too good for her. He soon found out he wasn’t.  
  
But he’d been normal, then. That’s what she’s trying to give back to him. Remember this, Fox? Remember what it was like to want this?   
  
Because she can’t. She can’t remember ever wanting this.  
  
There are numbers in her head. The ticking of the clock. Two more hours of this, the surgeon assures her. Two hours. Two thousand Puerto Rican women, unknowingly sterile and trying desperately to be fruitful and multiply. Two fake kids, watching their fake parents grow old and love hard.   
  
I do love you, Fox, she thinks at him. I do.  
  
Not enough to live for him. She kills herself off, perhaps a little young. Don’t forget his affection for tragedy. What’ll it be? A heart attack. Something quick and not too unexpected with her genetic history. The funeral is open casket, as her upcoming one will certainly not be. Real fairy tales, where the princesses commit suicide and witches feast on children, won’t even get an ending this wonderful.   
  
They’re ready to finish the operation and she leaves him with a kiss on the cheek. C.G.B. Spender, that pathetic fuck, looks at her from underneath his bandages like he hasn’t sent for two starving, pretty-eyed boys to gun her down in her highrise apartment.   
  
She does love him. She saved his life, even. She spots a flash of red hair disappearing behind glass doors and rolls her eyes – it’s a damn good thing that woman hadn’t actually been sent in as a real spy, because she’d be terrible at it. More numbers. Twenty-six. Twenty-six dead little girls with strawberry blonde hair and lime green blood. Thirty. The minutes it takes to drive back to Watergate.   
  
It’s not the best one they’ve provided her with, this apartment. They know her appreciation of fine leather and finer views, and this one offers neither.  
  
Twelve-hundred dollars, the cost of her monthly rent. Twelve years old, the age Fox Mulder will always be.  
  
Her counting doesn’t cease, not til the very end, but she does stop thinking about him. She loves him, she does. Not enough to die for him.  
  
Sixty-two minutes. She sits on her expensive couch and lies in wait for sixty-two minutes. Six thousand, four hundred and thirty-eight. The amount of chips she’s held in her hands and plugged in to read like a good book. The amount of people who are gone, now, sacrificed to the cause. Six thousand, four hundred and thirty-eight.

It’s not for him


	18. apparently I get dark when I’m drunk not necessary illegible to

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was horribly, horribly drunk for TXF drunk writing challenge. Here was my summary: This is MSR and Mulder gets blown during ice. And Scully is kinky. One of your words was habit right? Warning for like dark sexy thoughts This is the FIC.

Here is something he does not know about her and will not be allowed to remember for several years: fear turns her on. What a horrible habit for her to fall into, given her career choice. What an unfortunate vice, given her taste in movies. She gets wet every time she watches “The Evil Dead” and she can’t be sure the cause is only Bruce Campbell.

But he comes to know it, for a moment, only briefly on the ice. You might not be who you are. She’ll let him think that, that this isn’t her, when the tension leaves, when the fear has passed. But she is who she is, and she is Dana Katherine Scully, shucked in flannel, knees grinding hard on the cool cement.

Only a fraction of it could be blamed on the way he grabbed her, spun her around to inspect her neck. He’d been so angry… why didn’t you trust me, Scully. It’s been me this entire time, Scully. You sequestered yourself with certain death, Scully… Dana, now, her leaning forward forward to suck him to the hilt.

“Dana,” he groans, and she hopes they hear it. The other scientists. The ones that think they know better than her, that Mulder could have killed that man. She pulls back to look up at him, lips suckling at his heated flesh, and he’s staring at her with such adoration it makes her nervous. Oh, hell. She laps innocently at the tip of his cock, lets him see her fingers disappear into her panties. His head falls back and it stops being so serious. Thank god.

His gun, pointed right at her head. He probably hadn’t meant to aim so expertly but she’s so little he forgets sometimes. She rides her fingers a little hardeer, wishes she had had the foresight to bring a condom. But it seems like he’s too close to coming anyway, with how he’s whimpering and pumping his hips.

“You’re so big,” she tells him, stroking him with her fist over the flat of her tongue. He is big but that’s not why she says it, she just kind of wants to know if he’ll get off from being told that, if he’s that kind of man. It’ll tell her a lot about him. Sure enough, he cries out what the fuck, Scully, and begs her to put her mouth back on him. He’s so gentle about it, keeping his hands away from the back of her head, that suddenly she knows for certain he’s not infected. She feels inordinately proud of her scientific proweress.

Mulder, pressed lithely along her tense back while she cuts the worm out of a dying Bear. The timber of his voice as he yells at her like she’s beytraued him. Dr. Da Silvia’s thankful face and her brown nipples, her eyes slipping shut and her head back in relief, the tender column of her throat exposed. Them, all of them, being out here in the ice with no where to go, no hope for rescue. Death, betrayal, fear. Her thumb strokes over her clit, Mulder’s seed spills hot in her mouth; she thinks of him,how he’s probably thinking of her, and that fear runs so hot and deep she comes hard, moaning around his dick and fucking herself raw.

You may not be who you are


	19. the show needed more aliens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I got drunk because I couldn't force myself to watch I Want To Believe the first time sober. I wrote this, after. My drunk summary:
> 
> it’s a drabble and i think it’s pg;;  
> does scully ever use contractions, by the way? i took mine all out in case. i think she says “won’t” sometimes. i want to write something sad too i don’t know

“Say there is life on other planets.”

“I say it all the time, Scully.” 

“Why are we only focusing on the Grays?”

It’s a good question. 

“They’re the only ones that seem like they’re actively trying to eradicate our species, SCully.” And funding. That’s a huge part of it. They have like two dollars.

“And why are they all humanoid? That’s not very imaginative. Are we t so self-absorbed and wholly uncreative that we cannot fathom the existence of a creature in which we have no frame of reference? One where we cannot point to our own patterns of evolution and make a comparison? Maybe they’re not humanoid at all.”

Mulder is turned on and trying not to let her show it. “Maybe it’s too terrific for us to imagine. Maybe we’re scared. We have no other frame of reference from which to start from except our own humanity. If extraterrestrial life isn’t somewhat human in nature, then…”

“What?”

“Then we’re not the be-all, end-all of the universe, Scully.”

“I know that’s news to you, Mulder, but you don’t have to sound so sad.”


	20. pay no mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> pg; early MSR/friendship; fluff; Snapshot. They probably dealt with a few broken down cars over the years.

He lays his jacket out and sits down, folding his long legs underneath him and loosening his tie. A stack of folders sit beside him, along with a book and a newspaper and one of her med journals, to placate him in case he gets bored while they wait for the tow truck. For now he’s content to sit down and turn his head up to the sun, letting it bake the side of his face.

Scully paces around the car, branches and leaves snapping quietly under her weight. But she’s not angry, not at all, or nervous. She occasionally bends down to steal a sunflower seed from him and pauses to crack it before continuing her little loops. The rustling sounds of the yellowing aspen trees and her footfalls knock around in his head like a pleasant dream.

They both let out unconscious peals of laughter whenever a restless barred owl warbles at them from a distance, disgruntled _oooohs_ and _awwws_ that catch them off guard every time. He identifies it for her with his eyes closed, misses her own rolling eyes, misses her mumbling “I know what it is” under her breath as she takes another seed and pauses.

When his hands begin to idly roam and smooth over the gun in his holster, he draws it out and discharges the clip. Juggles and spins it in his hand like a bad FBI agent (but a badass spy), holds a dramatic pose that makes her scoff and stop at his side, nearly stepping on his jacket.

“You ever played with toy guns as a kid, Scully?” He asks her. “Cops and robbers? Spy versus spy?”

“I preferred the real thing.” She leans back against the hood of the car, smirking every bit the cool kid. Her leg brushes his his shoulder. “I had a BB gun. My brothers and I used to shoot at cans and whatever clay targets Bill Jr. managed to sneak from Ahab.”

He peeks up at her and quirks a tiny grin, pleased that there are stories about her, happy ones, innocent ones, that he knows without her knowing he knows. He slips her a few more sunflower seeds, she does that pausing thing again, and it dawns on him, he’s onto her, he’s noticed something poking at his scalp. She can’t control her giggling when he fiddles with his hair and comes back with a handful of leaves.


	21. horror show

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> pg; fluff; MSR; season 7; Mulder and Scully find themselves in a spooky situation i.e. this is the fluffiness shit I ever wrote.

The darkness is oppressive and all too giving – the vibrating shadows, a dot of murky light revealing a mysterious puddle on the floor. The walls undulate and come at them. He can’t say for certain there are any walls. Like being trapped in in his own coffin, he fills his lungs with air and refuses to let any out in fear of crowding the room. Another step and everything is endless, and his chest expands, his unblinking stare goes hard. He’d been to the end of the world, and it was nothing like this.

And when the laughter starts, he wants to laugh too. It brays out from nothingness like paint pouring on to a blank canvass. It is the wind, it’s steely, motorlike, rust on rust and then it’s nails on a chalkboard, the laughter of a newborn child, of your mother when you confide in her your dreams. He shudders and pulls her closer, because she is the only thing that is solid and warm. But when they take another step it feels like she’s too far away again. He tugs her back. They take another step. He tugs her back.

When it happens he thinks for a moment his heart may fail, or at least crawl out of his mouth and plop on the floor. All the cells in his body die and come back to life. He goes to shield her, but where is she…

“Boo!” Scully chuckles again, wiggling the beam of her flashlight in her face. Behind her he spies a door and above her is the ceiling. 

“Scully,” he huffs, squeezing her shoulder tight and willing his organs to retreat back to their cavities. “I am _armed_! What were you thinking?”

“We’re in a fake haunted house,” Scully says, rolling her eyes. She reaches behind her to open the door and warm light spills into the room as they spill back on the street. The owners wave at them merrily, covered in fake blood and bits of hay. One of them gives Scully a questioning _thumbs up_ and she returns it with her half-smile. 

“I was a little on edge,” he admits, shoving his hands in his pockets and turning away from her. He doesn’t respond when she asks something, but he doesn’t pull away when she forces her arm under the one locked tight to his body. 

“Oh come on Mulder, you try to scare me all the time!” She raises her voice, trying to pull his arm out so they can walk more comfortably. After a few gentle tugs he relents, and they walk down the bustling cobblestone path linked arm in arm.

“And may I remind you,” she adds around barely stifled laughter. “You do it when our lives are actually in danger.”

“You have a cute scream,” is all he says. Dead and dying leaves crunch under their shoes, and the chilly air whips their faces red and chubby. She burrows a little closer to him.

“So do you,” she replies. He stops to brush a leaf out of her hair and beg with his eyes to go find food. “It’s not girly at all.”


	22. arm in arm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pg-13; MSr; revival; FLUUUUFFFF
> 
> One sentence prompt on Tumblr -- anon sent me "It's none of my business really, Mulder, God knows it's not, but here's a piece of advice for you: don't fuck this up".

"It's none of my business really, Mulder, God knows it's not, but here's a piece of advice for you: don't fuck this up.

He’s used to Agent Einstein hating his guts, but the language is a little much.

“Maybe Scully will fuck it up this time,” he shrugs, and turns to fiddle with his tie in front of the mirror. 

They’re serious about this whole private wedding thing. Deadly serious. Skinner is armed to the teeth and Agent Miller later tells Mulder he thinks he saw Scully strap a gun to her ankle under her dress. “Why were you looking?” Mulder asks him, only half-serious.

The world likes kicking them around a little. This time, they’re prepared. He wiggles his arm while Einstein rolls her eyes; the concealed knife isn’t all that uncomfortable.

“I won’t fuck it up,” he promises her, and lets her escort him outside, shouting nonsense into her military-grade walkie-talkie. 

In the springy meadow of their backyard, everyone looks appropriately morose in their all-black garb. He doesn’t take it personally. Doggett and Skinner don’t know anything else, and William is Punk, apparently, came to them out of the sky with a pierced eyebrow and a lousy attitude. Monica thinks the color black promotes creation, like the Big Bang in a vacuum of nothingness. 

And of course, Scully is dressed to kill. Him, probably. But he can’t think about that in public.

Skinner prowls the perimeter like an angry cat who is also a decorated war veteran. Mulder almost doesn’t cry when he kisses her.


	23. case open shut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> pg; hurt comfort; MSR; post-Irresistible
> 
> One sentence prompt: I guess I forgot to pack that.

"I guess I forgot to pack that."

She says it so distractedly and business as usual things feel normal for a moment. He forgets burying his nose in her hair, untying her trembling wrists, and that only minutes before all that he’d thought, for a second too long: what will I tell her family, she takes such good care of her hands. 

Lending her a t-shirt to sleep in is the easiest, most normal thing in the world, and this case never happened. Scully needs something to sleep in, he’ll provide it for her, and tomorrow he’ll promise himself to pay more attention next time.

When he leaves the room, he doesn’t notice her pulling the collar to her nose, or that she’s tucking blue silk further into the bottom of her suit case.


	24. mint julep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> pg; MSR; fluff; post-Arcadia
> 
> One sentence prompt: Fox Mulder knows very little about self-care.

Fox Mulder knows very little about self-care. He knows very little about taking care of anything, really, and his emotional state – and certainly his face – cap the bottom of the list.

This is nice, though. Mostly it means that Scully’s stopped being angry at him enough for her to pretend to enjoy his presence for more than fifteen minutes. He feels like he can finally breathe in his stupid pink polo (he thought she’d laugh) and sit back and relax a little, wait until the undercover team comes and takes this alternate universe apart.

“Watch it,” he warns her when she giggles and paints a stripe of green goo above his lip. It burns in a pleasant way, and now they smell alike. “You almost got some in my nose.”


	25. dog problems

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> msr/friendship; crack/humor; season 3; Scully tells Mulder how she feels about kennels.

Had you told Mulder, just _one hour ago_ , that Dana Katherine Scully might find herself drowning in conspiracy theory and running her mouth off like one of his favorite zine writers, the one who hangs out by the IMF building on 19th street and passes out candy with his rants on the New World Order, well. He’d be inclined to the world a drink. Right after concealing his erection.   
  
But this sucks.  
  
“I’ve been doing some research, Mulder, and it worries me,” Scully tells him, ushering him into her apartment and sitting him down on the couch. That gives him pause. He just asked her to pack up a bag and get ready… so… what… is the hold up… 

When Queequeg starts nipping at his ankles, a sense of doom settles over him. That dog should be with someone else right about now, with Maggie or a sitter or at a…

“There’s a group of animal behaviorists doing a study in Germany that have made significant findings regarding the after-effects of keeping dogs in kennels,” she says in a rush, reaching down to collect her mutt. She gently scolds him and puts him in her bedroom, shutting the door behind her. Mulder wants to call her out, tell her you can’t fix a dog’s behavior by petting him and coddling him and saying, in the sweetest voice he’s ever heard from her, _good boy such a good boy,_ but… that doesn’t exactly work in his favor, either.   
  
She goes on like this for over an hour.  
  
“ _Depression_. Dogs can be _depressed_. Did you know that? I mean I chose to take this responsibility on and I can’t do it half-assed.”  
  
“The files are a responsibility, too,” Mulder reminds her, glaring at her bedroom door.   


“You are absolutely right on that. Do not question my loyalty to seeking the truth and doing our jobs. But it’s weekend and… did you get this approved? Were you able to rush that 302?”  
  
Mulder doesn’t even deem that with a response. When are they _ever_  able to rush a 302? Scully moves on and starts talking about dog stress, whatever that is, the statistics of abuse and neglect in the average American kennel

Is this what it’s like listening to him? He doubts it. _He_ is right. _He_  isn’t paranoid. This is paranoid. There are plenty of good, reputable kennels in the D.C. area. She lives in Georgetown, for chrissake, there are fifty students jogging right by her door every morning who’d kill for a little weed money.   
  
But she doesn’t relent. She apologizes to him and pets his hair before leaving the room to check on Queequeg. Good boy, he thinks viciously, pulling his jacket back on and heading back home. He doesn’t slam the door or storm down the hallway.  
  
And a seed isn’t planted, most certainly not. He doesn’t begin to hate Queequeg. That people eating monster. With a stupid name. And bad manners.


	26. pay no mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> pg; msr; fluff; season 2; no plot, maybe OOC, they're just happy.

He lays his jacket out and sits down, folding his long legs underneath him and loosening his tie. A stack of folders sit beside him, along with a book and a newspaper and one of her med journals, to placate him in case he gets bored while they wait for the tow truck. For now he’s content to sit down and turn his head up to the sun, letting it bake the side of his face.

Scully paces around the car, branches and leaves snapping quietly under her weight. But she’s not angry, not at all, or nervous. She occasionally bends down to steal a sunflower seed from him and pauses to crack it before continuing her little loops. The rustling sounds of the yellowing aspen trees and her footfalls knock around in his head like a pleasant dream.

They both let out unconscious peals of laughter whenever a restless barred owl warbles at them from a distance, disgruntled _oooohs_ and _awwws_ that catch them off guard every time. He identifies it for her with his eyes closed, misses her own rolling eyes, misses her mumbling “I know what it is” under her breath as she takes another seed and pauses.

When his hands begin to idly roam and smooth over the gun in his holster, he draws it out and discharges the clip. Juggles and spins it in his hand like a bad FBI agent (but a badass spy), holds a dramatic pose that makes her scoff and stop at his side, nearly stepping on his jacket.

“You ever played with toy guns as a kid, Scully?” He asks her. “Cops and robbers? Spy versus spy?”

“I preferred the real thing.” She leans back against the hood of the car, smirking every bit the cool kid. Her leg brushes his his shoulder. “I had a BB gun. My brothers and I used to shoot at cans and whatever clay targets Bill Jr. managed to sneak from Ahab.”

He peeks up at her and quirks a tiny grin, pleased that there are stories about her, happy ones, innocent ones, that he knows without her knowing he knows. He slips her a few more sunflower seeds, she does that pausing thing again, and it dawns on him, he’s onto her, he’s noticed something poking at his scalp. She can’t control her giggling when he fiddles with his hair and comes back with a handful of leaves.


	27. fabric of time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Based on a pic of terrible ties sewn together to make a skirt. Link to post: http://wtfmulder.tumblr.com/post/160071378186/wtfmulder-sunflowerseedsandscience

Scully doesn’t have to be better than Mulder at everything. She doesn’t. It’s been a long, long time since she’d sat in the basement office and thought to herself, before she’d even poured a cup of coffee: how am I going to prove him wrong today? Or those times she’d lie back in a nameless motel room, luxuriously appraising his fine, strong body as he did push-ups on the dingy carpet, before she realized – since when did he rep more than me?   
  
Those days are over. There’s nothing for her to prove, anymore, not to Mulder or herself. They’ve earned the little bit of happiness they’ve scrounged away. But baking? Seriously? Her mother forced her to knead dough until her fingers cramped and her forearms scared all the preteen boys away. Her grandmother made these cookies that were so soft and warm Scully would sometimes wake up, twenty years later, with _tears_  in her eyes, having dreamt about them and realizing she’d never get to eat them again. Baking is in her blood. 

Except it isn’t. Scully can’t bake for shit. One stressful day she’d brought in a homemade muffin for her breakfast and Mulder – after taking a bite, the jerk – mistook it for evidence.  
  
So when Mulder picks it up, after the two have finally settled in their cozy little home, and he appears to be… pretty damn good at it, Scully doesn’t take it personally, Scully doesn’t curse her habit of getting too aggressive with the bread, Scully doesn’t think _it’s just measuring, it’s just patience, what the hell is wrong with me and why are these brownies so good, Mulder?_  
  
Scully sews.   
  
Scully sews everything.   
  
Scully sews all the holes in Mulder’s t-shirts that had gone unsewn for years, even the one with the hole over the nipple. This honestly makes her a tiny bit sad. That shirt was always good for a laugh. Scully sews zippers and little ugly throw pillows that Mulder hates but kind of loves because he can hit her with them while they’re watching movies.   
  
To prove to herself she’s grown as a person and that she’s not jealous at all of Mulder’s baking proficiency, Scully sews an apron for Mulder from a roll of hideous fabric she finds discounted at JoAnn Fabrics. It has Jar Jar Binks all over it. He likes it so much she regrets ever making it, because now she has to look at it.   
  
Scully sews her own clothes and she sews her patients’ clothes, and she sews them ugly little throw pillows, and a doll, once, pretty and ornate and she hadn’t expected to it to hurt when she handed it over. She sews old, soft shirts into dishrags and she sews up blankets that are way past functional but are kept purely for their sentimental value.   
  
Scully sews people, too, but she’s always done that. Scully sews Mulder when he gets too cocky with his dough scraper.   
  
Scully… runs out of things to sew. Eventually. Her projects become either too routine or too big or too time consuming. Scully stops sewing, and it’s okay, because she’s got other things to do. Work gets in the way, Mulder gets her set up on Neopets.

 And then she sees them. They’re in a box in the closet. She’s looking for a dress she hasn’t worn in years, but Mulder’s been fixated on lately, when it nearly falls on her head and they all spill out on the floor.  
  
The ties.  
  
God, Mulder is lucky she’d been too in love with his body to notice his fashion sense when she first met him. And they’re both horrible hypocrites, so she doesn’t feel bad for thinking that. The ties are truly awful. They are paisley things, they are covered in flowers, they are louder than him. One of them is covered in honest-to-God turkeys, one of them she remembers tying him up with somewhere in rural Minnesota, so she keeps it, and others – they’re caustic shades of green, they’re slightly offensive, they’re overtly offensive, and they have to go.  
  
Except… she can’t throw them out. She can’t. She’ll go to toss one in the trash and she’ll be hit with a memory. Like the one with little stamps on it. He had that one on the time his ex-girlfriend… who was it? Phyllis? Came to town and he wore that thing and Scully suddenly didn’t feel so strangely worried. And the one with the fish eyes. He wore that one all the time. It made her feel more closely watched than his presence already made her feel.  
  
She doesn’t throw the ties out. She starts to sew them together. It’s insurance he’ll never wear them again, but it also allows her to hang on to some decent memories. You can never have enough of those. She sews them and sews them and sews them until the worst of them are all together, and she closes the circle, and hems up the top, and she’s planning on stuffing it with fluff when she notices that its her size.   
  
She fixes it up a little more. Adds a zipper. He wanted a dress but this will have to do.   
  
He’s making some disgustingly (wonderful) sugary concoction when she steps out in it, and he nearly drops the spatula on the floor. Thank god he doesn’t because she always gets dibs on the spatula. She grabs it and takes a long lick, decides she really does love his baking after all.  
  
“I can’t believe I had sex with you wearing these ties,” she tells him. They’re both lucky they’re both so weird. He’s looking at her like he wants to devour her.  
  
“I can’t believe I’m about to have sex with _you_  wearing these ties,” he replies. And he does.  
  



	28. planetary courting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> msr fluff, set before deep throat.

Fox Mulder is a question mark of a man, in the way of all general esoterica but also quite literally when he hunches over her in a perfect curve and whispers theories in her ear that she wants to slap away like a pesky gnat. He knows nothing of personal space. She can’t decide if he believes all space he encounters is his own or that space belongs to no one. 

He sits entirely too close to her in a diner that used to be a tax collector’s office. The tax collector’s name still sticks to the glass window. Occasionally the door pops open and someone sticks their head in, clutching tag renewal forms in their meaty fists, and not even the smell of bacon gives them pause. They need their tags. The waitress redirects them to the new tax collector’s office on 149 West Eagle Street. Right by the statue of of a gigantic orange. You can’t miss it. The orange has a face. It is smiling.

Mulder is smiling. Scully doesn’t like his smile. It is condescending and slightly threatening and altogether much too handsome. This is their third case, and Mulder asks her if she believes in cellular cosmogony. The name alone tells her she doesn’t believe in cellular cosmogony. It’s the belief, he tells her, that the world is inside out. The sun is in the middle. We are but a cosmic egg. The shell around a tender yolk.

They don’t have a safe word for hollow earth theories. They need one. Scully makes him promise with his hands flat on the table that he’ll never drag her on a case where the earth is flat or inside out or upside down or the creative project of some astrological wizkid snorting coke on Venus.

They leave the diner and Mulder insists on buying boiled peanuts, and insists that it be at the worst gas station they can find. That’s where the best ones are, Scully. He opens the door for her. Scully doesn’t mind this. It’s interesting to dissect what social niceties Mulder has chosen to effect and which ones to leave behind. He opens doors for her and speaks over her and gets her coffee order right and slouches before their superiors and she is at least thirty percent certain he’s called her a bitch in the privacy of his own terrible head.

They drive past houses and churches and a general store with tin roofs and fresh paint, and Mulder lets her know he’s just feeling nostalgic. Hollow earth theories. How easily we disprove them. I’ve never actually seen the center of the earth, Scully. Have you? She is distressed that she wants to. He buys a can of boiled peanuts. She eats some and scrunches up her face. She eats some more, and they stand in their hot suits under the Florida sun. The AC in the car is an experience, when they return. They briefly ascend. Mulder undoes his tie. She watches. They drive past cracker cattle and citrus markets and briefly everything smells like swamp. There were no aliens here. There were no monsters. Scully doesn’t know what to put on her report. 


	29. home cooked meal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Home, missing scene. Sheriff Andy Taylor and his wife.

“You’re late, Sheriff,” pours out from the kitchen, the smooth, honeyed tones of his wife competing with the smell to bowl him over. A heaviness leaves him and his body relaxes. At the back of his head a tension throbs, and he’s not naive enough to believe it will go away.   
  
“I’m sorry, Helen,” he sighs, hanging his coat on the rack and following the sound of her. With her back to him she plates up, piling yellow rice and roast chicken onto his dish so high he’ll be hurting in the morning. “It’s been…”  
  
“A rough day. I know, honey. I know.” She turns around with their plates, urging him to follow her into the dining room. They sit down across from each other. Their fingers brush when they both reach for rolls. Glasses of sweet tea sweat on the table and he can’t get a good grip on his own, almost drops it when he brings it to his lips.  
  
“What’s wrong, Sheriff?” She asks, her fork stopping in her rice. She tilts her head and frowns in concern, the familiar lines of her face filling with worry and adoration. God, he loves her. He loves their home. He loves everything about these moments.  
  
“It’s work. We shouldn’t talk about it.”  
  
“The child, right?” She asks softly, sitting back in her chair. “Over by the Peacock house.”  
  
“It’s unimaginable what was done to that baby,” he admits, clenching his fists around silverware, trying not to let them drop out of his hands. “I never even knew something like that could happen.”  
  
“Andy…”  
  
“Helen,” he swallows, pushing down sorrow in his chest. “I think we should lock the doors tonight. Just to be safe.” She goes quiet for what feels like a year, daintily chewing at her food in thought until she’s ready to speak.  
  
“Do you remember the first time we met?” She asks, dabbing at the corner of her mouth with a napkin. Despite himself a smile forms at the memory. How could it not?  
  
“Of course I do,” he replies. “We were so young then, but I remember. You were the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”  
  
“I was the dumbest thing you’ve ever seen,” she chuckles, shaking her head. “We were in fourth grade. I walked right out into that field…”  
  
“In the middle of our ballgame. I remember. You had your hands on your hips and you were yelling so loud the chickens got all riled up…”  
  
“And I got hit, right in the head.” She taps a spot on her temple, wincing playfully at the memory. “You clocked me good.”  
  
“I didn’t think someone was going to walk right in front of me as I was pitching,” he laughs, holding his knife and fork up in defense. “I certainly didn’t expect that someone to be as lovely as you.”  
  
“You all were ruining my mother’s vegetable garden. She spent all her time in that vegetable garden…”  
  
“But we all helped her plant a new one, didn’t we?”   
  
“You did,” she smiles, nodding. But then her face turns serious and she leans slightly into the table, locking him in place with her eyes, so dark and kind they could heal him, if only he ever needed to be healed. He knows those eyes just as well as he knows anything else. Maybe he knows them more. “Do you remember what you said to me when I started crying?”  
  
His throat closes up, nearly, and his heart hurts. To think of her crying, to think of everything that’s happened. To think of Home. “I told you…”  
  
“You told me what?”  
  
“I told you you didn’t have to cry.” He clears his throat and looks down in his lap. “I told you nothing was going to hurt you.”  
  
“Nothing was going to hurt me _where_?”  
  
“In Home,” he says quietly. “I told you nothing was ever going to hurt you. Not here. Not in Home.”   
  
“That’s right,” she says, standing up. She begins to clear their dishes and pack away the leftovers, making sure to set some aside for him to pick at later when he starts reading his novel. When she’s finished, she stands behind his chair and leans over his back, wrapping her arms around his middle. “And you believed that. You believe it now.”  
  
“Helen…” he starts off weakly, squeezing his eyes shut. “Helen, that baby…”  
  
“It’s a tragedy. A disgrace. It shouldn’t have happened,” she agrees with him, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “And it won’t happen, again. Not here.”  
  
“Not in Home,” he says. He cups her arm with one large hand and squeezes it tightly. She buries her face in his neck, soaking in his scent and warmth.  
  
“We don’t lock our doors.” Firm. A command. Stronger than anything, his wife. Stronger than him. He nods slowly.  
  
“We don’t.” And he turns his face to kiss her, to cradle her skull and repeat the promise he made so long ago. “Not in Home.”   



	30. matron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Msr, Home post-ep, Mulder & Sculky on the ride to the airport.

“I think that’s the worst thing I’ve ever had to do,” Scully says randomly on the drive back to the airport. It’s said so nonchalantly he almost misses it; he’d been kind of ignoring everything else, technical stuff about genetic abnormalities he can’t follow. But hey. A confession from Scully. Totally worth the fear she is implanting in his soul with her lousy driving.   


“You mean driving past…” oops, one more. “Four stop signs?”  


“Most people here don’t even have a car,” she hisses, but she slows down. He feels less like has to pee now. “I’m talking about the autopsy.” Well, now he feels like a dick.  


“I can’t imagine,” he says, because he can’t. The fetus hadn’t a mouth or any hair or visible feet. With all the blood and the dirt it did not, in fact, resemble anything like a child except for it’s tiny, clenched fists with all of its tiny clenched fingers. He left when she pulled out her scalpel, just like he always does. So he hadn’t had to see evidence of a heart or a brain or any other vital organs you’d expect to see in a human. She faced the very crux of its humanity and was forced to view it as a child, a once living thing, and he was not.   


“That was her child, Mulder,” she says thickly, tightening her hands around the steering wheel. He straightens up in his seat and looks her over, concerned. “It was very lucky to not have lived another second. It was very lucky to not have met her.”  


“Scully…”  


“Those were her children,” she continues, staring straight ahead at the road. “I cannot fathom what kind of mother could do that to her children.”  


“I can’t fathom what kind of children could do that to their mother,” he winces, very inappropriately. He hurries before she can look over at him and make him feel guilty, “I think it’s all she’s ever known, Scully. Her mother probably did the same. And her mother’s mother. And her mother’s mother’s mother…”  


“You just hope, Mulder. You just have this hope that it will come natural to you.” This is the voice that he can’t ever ignore, the voice she hits him with when she’s grown weary or close to giving up. It hurts him to hear it. “You hope you know right from wrong as soon as you find out you’re pregnant.”  


“You’re worried,” he says softly, and nods when she bites her lip. “You’re worried that you won’t know.”  


“I won’t ever, ever be like her,” she says vehemently. He chuckles darkly.  


“I can vouch for that.”  


“But this…” she doesn’t finish. He knows. Mrs. Peacock is undeniable proof that there’s no recipe for good parenting and even worse, how easy it is to convince yourself you’re a good parent, that you’ve made the right choices, that you’re incapable of making the wrong one.  
  
He grips her knee and squeezes, wishing he could hold her hand or hug her close. But she needs to keep her eyes on the road. Maybe later. “Scully,” he says. “I don’t think that’s something you’ll ever have to worry about.”


	31. Chapter 31

“Mulder, no,” she groans, snapping her eyes shut. The pressure relieves her tension headache for only a second, then it comes back – twice as painful. She involuntarily shifts towards the dead weight beside her. He sunk the bed like a missile. “This is my room.”

“Shut up Scully,” he groans back. She can almost see in the light-spotted dark of her eyelids, sprawled out with his forearm over his lined face. He doesn’t have anything else to add to that. 

Scully goes to the gym four nights a week, and on her skip days she’s chasing Mulder into dark corners, and then scaling them. She dead lifts, she jerks. She runs and she hates it and she spars and she wins. One day she’ll be the model cadaver, with every bone in place and enough anatomical oddities to be interesting, but easy to lift on and off the slab. She is a healthy woman, and Mulder is a healthy man (to the point of distraction – he will make an exceptional cadaver, but living…)

But Domestic Terrorism is _no joke_. They’re sunburned, they’re sweaty. The mental beatdown has its physical consequences. Mulder might assume she takes it better, maybe even likes it a little, but women are more accustomed to bearing pan. She’s whittling her mind with a butter knife when he once spoiled her with Damascus. 

“Scully,” he says, voice tearing like red tape. Gradually she’s been rolling closer to him. Now they’re nearly touching, her bent knee brushing his belly. God, fuck it. Just fuck it all. She finishes the job and curls up to him, ignores his miserable heat and scent and demeanor. He throws his arm off of his face to pull her close and shove his nose in her greasy hair. “I fucking _hate this_.”

She nods her agreement into his chest.


	32. to build a thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MSR. Early Unremarkable House era. Prompt: pregnancy scare.

She brought him the lemonade they made too sweet, so he gulped it down and she opted a glass of water. It was good to see him golden, to watch him sweat and work with that singular focus he’d been cursed with. But painting was different; the brush could not evade him. With every stroke, the wood looked that much nicer.  
Their little house looked more like home. He was so rarely afforded the natural culmination of things.

Every half hour or so, he called out to her to once again be his watch. “Missed any spots?” He’d ask, careful not to get paint in his eyes when he shielded them from the sun. From her notable distance, nearly swallowed by the shade of their walnut tree, she looked up, squinted, and gave him a thumbs up. He returned to work, and she returned to the same sentence she’d been reading from the time she had sat down.

Hours later, he plopped down beside her in the grass they had mowed just yesterday. The yard had been filled with branches, junk metal, rotten pallets – different garbage for every level of classification – and they had discarded it together. She put down her book and rubbed him down with aloe vera gel until the mosquitos came out, until he was nearly asleep in her lap. They entered the house together, hand in hand. She held her breath so she wouldn’t gag.

Before they slept, they clung to each other, silent save for the groans of their little house, its complaints and growing pains.

“I don’t know how to stop running,” he said, in place of good night. “But what a place to try.”

In the morning, she drove to the drug store. The test did not make it home with her.


	33. mimosa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scully/Reyes -- having lunch together after s10.

Monica Reyes, at one time in Dana Scully’s life, had been her tether to all that was enjoyable. She had been the only thing capable of pulling her out of her own head, neural alleyways so deep and dark she got lost. It was a subtle thing, and perhaps Monica never really knew how much she meant to Scully.

A lot of it had been in her face. Scully would be off in her own (increasingly narrowed) world, dropping out of conversations, never getting into them. But suddenly she’d catch a glimpse of Agent Reyes out of the corner of her eye, and she would be smiling, then laughing – and everyone would seamlessly follow. Monica was always the leader, because Monica always got the joke.

It’s not fair for Scully to imagine that Monica, and downright hypocritical to compare her to the one she is currently brunching with. Time is the most dangerous killer. It has killed almost everything for Scully, and had murdered Monica’s laughter.

But it heals as it destroys.

“So.” It’s the first thing either of them has said since their plates arrived, and the preceding conversation had been void of anything substantial. “After the vaccinations were distributed, it became imperative that we take William away from the public eye. It’s not safe for people to know who he is.”

Scully holds her breath and studies Monica’s face. Her makeup is flawless, not a hair out of place, and there’s not a single flicker emotion to rely on. Whatever she needed from Monica then is no longer being offered. Scully exhales without any feeling of relief. The sentence left her in suspense, and Monica is leaving her hanging.

“Dana.” The clink of plates being pushed aside, then her arm outstretched over the table. Her hand covers Scully’s where it twitches and drums. The taller woman watches Scully avoid her gaze. “Dana.” Scully reluctantly looks up.

It’s not a smile, but it is light, the way that Monica had always been the light. “We’re bringing William back to you at the end of the week. He’s so,  _so_  excited to meet you.”

Scully sobs and laces their fingers tightly together.


	34. for two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MSR. S6. Prompt: Mulder telling Scully that "she's a scientist and should know better" when she starts eating bee pollen.

“So I was thinking about breakfast for lunch today. This whole human-as-ovipositor thing has me craving eggs. What do you think? There’s that new waffle place over on…” He trails off when he meets her wide-eyed, Got-My-Hands-Caught-In-A-Reverse-Cookie-Jar innocence. “Damn it Scully! Are you a bee?”

She keeps her hand poised over the yogurt cup, though the packet of pollen is empty. “It helps reduce chances of liver cancer.”

“What's wrong with your liver?”

“It’s a great source of magnesium,” she lists off. “It increases red blood cell content in rats.”

“Spinach has a ton of magnesium. I’ll ask them to put some on your waffle.” He glowers at her, leaning all the way back in his chair. She puts the spoon in her mouth and his groan is loud enough to spook the roaches. “You are a  _scientist_ , Dr. Scully. You should know better.”

“In rabbits it was shown to improve rate of conception,” she says with a mouthful of yogurt. He softens when she looks away and piles in another guilty spoonful. His eyes travel to her stomach, and then back to her face.

“You’re not a rabbit. But I get it. Next time just… put it in some soup or something.” Hopefully, he doesn’t say, hopefully you’ll soon be eating for two.


	35. unwilling uncle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: William and Uncle Skinner have a play date, that may or may not end in Skinner wearing pearls and a giant floppy hat

Walter Skinner was a serious man.

He took his coffee one way, the same way, had done so since he was a boy. Black with half a teaspoon of sugar. Good enough for his grandfather, good enough for him.

He ordered the same drink at every bar, ate the same food at every restaurant. He routinely visited a financial planner, but had no wish to retire. He chose a workout routine and he stuck with it for more than thirty years. He chose a zip code. He chose charities. He chose his gun, his style of pens, the maker of his suits, and the supplier of Italian leather that made up his shoes, his wallets, his belts.

He had never seriously worried about the draft, because he knew he would enlist by the time he was 14.

He was serious about never, ever wanting children. He and Sharon had been on the same page. Sharon wanted travel, and more than anything she wanted choice. He did not want to bring a child into a world that could create something like the Vietnam War. He wanted stability. To him there was only one choice, to make the world a safer place for the people who already lived in it, and that is where he and Sharon went wrong.

So Walter Skinner never had a child, and he never regretted it. He had surprised himself, with how deeply he had felt for Agent Scully during the total grindhouse production that had been her pregnancy, how hard he rooted for Mulder (how hard he’d  _been_  on Mulder) to step up and kick some ass. Whenever he saw the pair of them with that child, there was the sense that the world was, indeed, a safer place, and he had done what he could to make it that way. He felt accomplished. Proud. Proud, even, to be called Uncle, in title only…

Until it finally came time for him to babysit.

“You guys will get along great,” Mulder grinned, one frightened, lanky, little boy wrapped around his hip, one terrified old man staring uneasily at the boy. Scully hummed her assent from somewhere in the kitchen.

“He’s a great kid,” Skinner offered, knowing it was true. Out of all the kids he’d known from the sidelines, William was certainly the most behaved.

Scully came from the kitchen holding a bottle of wine and something in a casserole dish, setting everything down on the coffee table to separate the clinging Mulders, putting William down on the floor with a warm smile.

“Be good, honey. We love you. You know what to do if you start getting those headaches again, right?”

“I return to my room with a warm wash cloth and ask Uncle Skinner to please close the blinds.”

“Good boy.” She ruffled William’s hair, and he giggled and smoothed it back.

“Should we tell him about the cat allergies–”

“He doesn’t have a cat, Mulder–”

“Or if things start to–”

“Skinner knows to duck.”

“If he starts reading your mind tell him to cut it out,” Mulder warned Skinner. Scully pushed him closer to the door, taking the wine and the food with her. “He knows he’s not supposed to do it. Love you buddy. I’m taping that show you like, about the Guilded Age, so we won’t missing–” the door shut behind them.

“Love you daddy!” William called out. Then he turned and left Skinner alone in the living room.

He returned with a wooden treasure chest, and looked so apprehensive Skinner found himself relating.

“I have so many toys that I don’t know what to play with,” William explained, pulling apart his bounty one by one. “I have to choose what feels right.”

Before Uncle Skinner, he placed an assortment of trucks and raceable cars, puzzle boxes, dolls and board games. Toy guns, a Lego set, a mini microscope.

Skinner held each one up, and all of the rejects were plucked from his fingers by a mysterious force, and settled neatly back into the chest. The only toy that remained was a plastic bag filled with miscellaneous fabric.

“I think this is it.” William said. Skinner nodded. Examining the contents, he found it to be – dress up. Ugly moomoos and silk scarfs, a bow tie, a floppy hat, a string of pearls.

“Sometimes I just know that I have to do things, even if I don’t know why.” William took the bag from Skinner and dumped everything on to the floor. “Do you ever feel like that?”

Skinner smiled, and reached for the floppy, wife brimmed hat, and the shiny string of pearls. And William nodded his agreement that it was the right choice.

Because William Mulder was a serious boy.


	36. it came from the outside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MSR. Uremarkable house, pre-2012. Prompt was: flicker.

The rain never felt close growing up, not in base housing, concrete rising from concrete. Those many childhood homes had been built like her father: safe, indestructible. Permanent. She would watch her father wave to her from the port, concrete rising from concrete, the graying wind at his back like a lash, and the idea of him being swept away by anything so base and unimportant as the elements had been laughable.

Then she went to school, and after that she went to work. She never had the time to make more than acquaintances with the weather of a place.

But their Virginia house was old and battered, and brought the storm to its inhabitants with only a tired apology. It had fought for brutal years against tornadoes, blizzards, the occasional hurricane, and while it had a good few left, by no means did it have to look happy about it. The windows shook, porch wood rotted and needed to be replaced. Mixing bowls and her mother’s Tupperware went under the leaks, and caulking. So much caulking. Like seasoning the family cast iron, or Mulder stealing to the attic to polish leather somethings – Teena or William, she’d never asked – houses were an investment, and they needed to be maintained. But neither she nor Mulder had ever kept much for very long. Patches on the roof went without retiling and the guest bathroom didn’t work.

Perhaps they were failing.

With a cooling cup of coffee pressed to her chest, Scully stood by the window and waited for a sign. The roads were closed, and she had no way of getting to the hospital. Sister Jacobs had sounded stern on the phone.

“Curfew doesn’t begin until six o'clock, Dr. Scully,” she tutted. But when a tree crashed through the waiting room window, and Sister Jacobs screamed and pulled the jack out of the wall, Dr. Scully assumed she’d won the argument.

Getting a day off work could be her sign, or the water seeping in from under the doorstep. The thunder she felt before she heard, the vibrations rolling from her feet to the tips of her fingers, and the vengeful, yowling, crack of it: God playing ball with a rubbery earth. Those were signs of something, but they did not remove her from her place at the window. She liked to observe. She liked that there was something new in the yard to look at, and the way nature made everyone truly, universally powerless. Nothing could be done to stop what was coming. And so she didn’t try.

But she had done what she did best – prepare. She filled the basement with blankets, candles, flashlights and nonperishable food, pulled out the sleeping bags and cases of bottled water, books she’d read and hadn’t read, puzzle books – crosswords for Mulder, Sudoku for her. She hadn’t touched his supplies, like he’d asked, had instead purchased all new ones. She wondered if preparing for the end of the world was at all like waiting out a tornado, and if it was, why hadn’t he helped her?

Everything onward was up to chance. She closed her eyes and listened to the rain until the individual drops became earthly static, and the pummeling turned into deadly force.

And then, with her eyes still closed, she heard the natural hum of the house quiet down to nothing, a final electric breath. She caught a lamp flicker to its death and decided that was her sign. She emptied her coffee into the sink and checked the faucet – nothing. That was it, then.

Passing his office before her descent, she paused. The den was not as safe as the cellar. She had warned him, but had he heard… she knocked, three times to make sure he got it, and didn’t wait for him to follow her. She’d prepared to go through it alone, and everything onward was up to chance.

In the basement she made herself comfortable with a sleeping bag, a sleeve of Ritz crackers, a jar of peanut butter, and her book with the light attachment she’d grown fond of. It helped her out on all the restless nights.

Hours passed with her alone in that basement. When the door opened and a flashlight skimmed over her body on the floor, she was huddled in the corner clutching the sleeping bag to her chin.

“We lost power,” Mulder said, shining the light over his own face after making his final step.

She looked away from him, into the dark. There was nothing to say to him that hadn’t been said. She’d already yelled about him not picking up all the branches in the yard, or moving the potted plants inside. She’d come home after her shift the night before and been forced to do it herself, and it had taken her until the day had shifted into the next.

“They’re saying it might go on for weeks,” he continued. He set something on the floor and begun playing with it. A radio, she noted, when the voices started talking. But he turned it down low, and sat down on the cement across from her.

She looked at him. The beard, patchy, sticky and unkempt, not so much roguish as slovenly. He hadn’t showered. It might go on for weeks, he said, and he hadn’t showered. He talked to her, more than he had in weeks.

“So this is what it will be like. You know, we’ve spent a lot of time in basements…”

They’re both startled by a loud shattering sound; a sickening shriek from the old house called out to them and begged them for help. She wondered if they would ever answer.


	37. we give thanks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mulder accidentally lets it slip that Scully has a tattoo while having dinner with Bill Scully and Maggie. Set post-IWTB. Angst and hurt/comfort.

“Could you pass me the dinner rolls?” Mulder asks, directly after making the biggest mistake of his life. Sweet, smiling Tara lifts the plate and slides it to him, and her hands are barely even shaking. He couldn’t ask for a kinder woman to serve him his last meal, really. 

He rips a piece of soft, buttery bread off with his teeth, chewing noisily as the room lapses into a tense silence around him. All the Scully women with their heads in their hands, a familial tick that Tara must’ve picked up. Matthew Scully, that blond little prick, wearing his shit-eating grin and all the years of animal abuse he’s been hiding from his parents. 

Bill Scully Jr. and the bulging vein in his head, his large, meaty hands tightening around Navy-issue tableware.

“What did he just say?” He asks softly.

Backtrack. For the love of god,  _backtrack._ “I was kidding,” Mulder lies, laughing awkwardly. “You know. Dana the rebel. You can’t throw a t-shirt on the floor without feeling guilty, can you, honey?” He nudges a slumping, defeated Scully, with his  wrist, panic building in his chest the longer she refuses to look up. 

It’s his fault Scully doesn’t have a relationship with her family anymore, that strong, immovable unit he used to admire and envy. He never would have gotten along with Bill Jr., but he always did his best to understand him. If Mulder had a sister to protect…

But Jesus Christ, Scully’s brother doesn’t make it easy on him. “You come to  _my house.”_ Billy boy grits his teeth, his nose turning as red as his hair. “You joke about  _my sister_  having a tramp stamp.”

Mulder shrugs, ignoring the flash of anger at the insinuation that anything about Scully could be considered  _trampy_. What’s he gonna do? Get up and kick this guy’s ass in front of his wife and child? Maybe ten years ago when he still kept his gun on him. Scully wouldn’t appreciate it, anyway. “I’m not very funny.”

“He wasn’t kidding,” Scully says suddenly, lifting her head. Ooooooh shit. That face. Mulder knows that face. He removes himself from the situation for his own safety. Someone’s going to get hurt.  “I got it a long time ago, and frankly what I do with my body is none of your business.” 

“You got a  _tattoo_?” Matthew laughs, his voice cracking halfway through. “Auntie Dana is a felon with a felon boyfriend, and she has a  _tattoo?”_

 _“Matthew!”_ Tara hisses, shooting her son a death glare. “You apologize right this instant!” 

“What was it, Dana? Some kind of alien?” Bill spits. The two siblings stare into each other’s eyes, cold ice meeting blue flame, and they both puff out their chests, they both raise their voices and slam their fists down on the table. “Or how about the Loch Ness Monster? Bigfoot?” 

“It’s a UFO, okay?” She hisses, snatching the napkin off of her lap and dropping it down on her plate. “It’s a big old UFO next to a flashing sign that reads  _please land here.”  
_  
“Dana.  _Katharine_.” Maggie and Scully both shove their chairs back and stand up at the same time, sending dishes clinking and wobbling all over the table. “There is  _no_ excuse for that sort of vulgarity. You sit back down.” 

“No, mom. No. This is the first time we’ve sat down for a meal together in  _years,_ and now I’m remembering why I stopped coming even before I had to go into hiding.” Mulder frowns; he had  _no clue_  Scully had ceased celebrating the holidays with her family before they went underground. The idea fills him with a terrible sadness, terribly quickly. “You insult my career. You insult my – you insult Mulder.” She draws in a shaky breath, her voice shaking with unshed tears and years of frustration unspoken. “You insult my  _choices_.”

Bill takes a slow, deliberate bite of his turkey, staring pointedly at his plate. “Well, Danes,” he sighs. “Maybe you should stop making such bad choices.” 

Mulder watches, frozen in his chair as Scully’s face falls, as her family becomes acquainted with her wrinkles for the first time. He looks to Maggie, the woman who lost her grandchild to his mistakes, the woman who isn’t saying anything, and feels his disappointment acutely as if it were his own mother who failed to do the right thing. He can imagine how tired she must be. She looks as if she’s aged about twenty years in only ten. 

When Scully says “We’re leaving,” he doesn’t get up, because of course they’re not just going to let her leave. Who would ever let Scully leave? But again the room lapses back into that awful silence. 

He swallows. He made that awful silence.  
  
He made this bitter family. 

San Diego winter is pleasant when they walk out to the car, and somehow it thaws them even though the heater blasted inside the base. 

Scully starts up the rental car, cursing under hear breath. Her hands shake around the steering wheel.  Suddenly Mulder misses his den, and he misses her short hair. He’d been the one who insisted on coming when Scully picked up Maggie’s call. Scully had been hesitant, and at the time he hadn’t been able to figure out why. 

The car doesn’t move. He watches her eyes go from dry to wet. His stomach turns. Undoing his seatbelt, he leans over and brushes a tear from her cold cheek. “I’m sorry, honey,” he mutters, lip wobbling when she nuzzles into his touch. He gathers her in his arms and rocks her awkwardly, the small car poking them at all angles. 

“I love them,” Scully says in a fierce whisper, wiping her eyes on his henley. “I will always love them. I don’t have a choice but to love them.”

He rocks her some more. He gets that. Boy, does he get that. If his parents were still alive, he knows they would’ve all ignored Thanksgiving separately. 

“But you, Mulder, you were always a choice.” Fuck. His lips brush her forehead as he fights his own tears. “Happy Thanksgiving, Mulder.”

“Happy Thanksgiving, Scully,” he whispers. Ten minutes pass. Scully drives them to a motel for the night. 


	38. catharsis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AU where Skinner tells Scully about CSM being William's father before MSIV.

Skinner’s on the front porch, arms crossed in a tight knot over his chest. The yard’s a fucking mess. He straightens it up in his head. Get all the rocks out. Drill holes in all the stumps, fill ‘em with saltpeter, soften the wood. Soak with kerosene for the better part of a week, set them fucking things on fire. Burn them. Burn them down. 

A window cracks from upstairs, her screams bursting out of it like construction rubble. 

God help him. He can’t. He can’t listen to that. 

Seed the lawn in all the patches and wait for it to grow. Get a mower, for fuck’s sake. When’s the last time this place had been mowed – 

“Scully.” The screams are louder, furniture goes down. Glass breaks. He hears Mulder’s voice grow even softer. “Scully. We’ll kill him, I swear to god. We’ll kill him.” 

The porch needs a powerwash. There are ticks everywhere; he’s pulled some off himself every time he’s popped by for a visit. Probably from deer. Human hair does the trick but where are they going to get a bunch of human hair? Certainly not from him. Hot pepper spray. All the plants. 

“What’s that going to do?” She laughs. “What the fuck is that going to do, Mulder? He’s already –” 

“We don’t  _know_ what he’s done _,_ Scully. We don’t know  _anything_. He’s a liar and we can’t trust anything he says.”  

“What if he isn’t lying?” Silence. “What if – what if –  _our son_ , Mulder, I can’t –”

Never. Never in his life has he heard her cry like that. Pull some weeds, at the very least. It almost looks like they’ve been trimming some down like prized rosebushes. 

There is crash that rattles the house, Skinner’s bones, the sky, like the wall has been ripped off and tossed in the air by the wind.

“Downstairs,” Mulder growls, panting. The rest of Skinner can’t hear, so he mends the fence. “The dishes downstairs.” 


	39. late night visit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mulder gets drunk and wants to confess everything to Scully after her cancer diagnosis. Set after Memento Mori.

Up like a jack-in-the-box she goes when a scraping at her doorknob startles her from dozing. Her eyes dart to the time illuminating from her answering machine: 2AM flashes back to her in neon red. She looks from the muted television screen, where bodybuilders carry on their workout in silence, to the door creaking open in the dark. **  
**

“Mulder?” She calls out, barely a whisper. Sure enough, his dark frame slips in from the hallway and whips around to gently close the door. He miscalculates; it meets the frame with a heavy thunk. “Shhh!” He hisses, just as Scully repeats, loudly this time, “Mulder?”

“Ah!” He jumps around and holds his hands up, or tries to. It throws his balance off and he trips backwards, jamming the knob into his back.

She leads his stumbling form over to the couch, his weight hefty and warm at her side. She tosses her blankets out of the way to make room for him to sit down.

“You shouldn’t be awake,” he admonishes, and she can smell how his night went on his clothes and breath. She touches her palm to his forehead, slides it under his chin to check his eyes.

He closes them. “Wait a minute.” He grabs her wrist, holds her hand to his scratchy cheek. Hiccups, blinks, and ducks his head to peer behind her, where a 900 girl tries to convince them to blow of some steam. “I love this one.”

“What do you think you’re doing, Mulder?” But she’s not angry. Unnerved, but not put out. He babbles as she fills a glass with water for him.

“My father was a drinker, but I suck at it, Scully.” He takes the glass of water and downs it, then pulls his tie from his collar and tosses it on the floor.

With his hair falling in his face, free from pomade and sticking up at the back, he reminds her of Queequeg, and she wants to pull him into her lap and fall asleep on the couch. She shakes her head.

“Did you drive here?” She asks, then tells him to take his shoes off.

“Of course not. I’m a federal agent.” He hiccups again and kicks his loafers under the coffee table. “Wait a minute, don’t go.”

“I’m just getting you some pillows, Mulder.”

“Don’t need ‘em.” He tugs her down next to him, into him, and how lucky he is that she has been feeling so off, so poorly, that she doesn’t snap at him for getting handsy. She puts a respectable distance between them, and watches him, all rumpled and dizzy in her living room, still unconsciously comparing him to her poor dead dog.

“I know all of these. By heart. Like poetry.” He throws his arm in the air, gesturing towards the TV, and lets it drop to hiss side with an uncomfortable thud. “This is the cat-shit one.”

“It’s  _Catch It_ , Mulder,” she smiles at him, indulgently.

“ _Cat-shit, by Sam Tell._ ” He pulls his body up straight, trying to look serious as his voice deepens in parody of the announcer. “ _A faster, easier way to clean out your litter._ Cat litter.” He relaxes again. “You can’t tell me that’s not on purpose.”

She’d been staring at the screen before he’d arrived, blinking away the hours, waiting for that snap second where the pain subsided just enough for her to trick herself into sleeping. If he wants her to turn him away, to ask him just what the hell he thinks he’s doing sneaking into her apartment when she was supposed to be asleep, he’ll have to pick that fight later. For now, he’s a welcome disruption to the routine her nights have taken.

More commercials come up, and he recites them word by word. Great legs. Thank you. How did you get them? You can make pasta with the Popeil Automatic Pasta Maker in under three minutes.  _From scratch? From scratch?_  “I fucked up, Scully,” he moans, grasping his head in his hands and pitching forward, rocking so that his elbows bump his knees. Just rocking like that, back and forth. She places a hand on his lower back and inches closer, worrying

“What are you talking about, Mulder? Did you hurt yourself?” She thinks of bar fights, the mad house, clandestine top secret source rendezvous gone horribly wrong.

Rocking and babbling, rocking and babbling. “I fucked up,” he says. “I fucked up. I fucked up.”

“How did you fuck up? Mulder, answer me.”

“Scully.” He jerks up, leans into her space and clasps her shoulders with both hands. There’s cheap liquor, yes, and the trails of something putrid and deep fried, but there’s his deodorant, his sweat. She tries to latch onto that to calm herself down as he works himself up, but anxiety digs up a pit in her stomach. “Scully, we have got to get you well again.”

Stunned, her shoulders fall slack under his grip. “I told you already,” she swallows, her face burning. “That I’ve got things to finish.”

“That’s not enough for me, Scully. I’m sorry, but it isn’t. You’ve got things to start, too. You’ve got so much–” his hands are shaking, and they slide down her elbows, trimmed nails lightly digging into her skin. “To start. With me.”

“Why’d you come here? Why’d you drink?” When his fingers brush her face, she wants to turn away, afraid they’ll come back wet with salt or blood. But all is clear.

“Because I had something to tell you,” he sniffs. His lips land clumsily on her forehead, tacky and dry. He kisses her forehead, and kisses her hair. “But I’m not going to tell you now because it’s not the right time. You need to get better, Scully, so I can tell you.”

“I can’t just pull the cure for cancer out of thin air, Mulder, but thank you for thinking so highly of me.”

“You can, or I can, or someone can. C’mon, don’t you want to know what I did? Hear me concede?”

The idea thrills her, just a little bit, Mulder admitting he did something wrong. “Mulder…” she trails off, and he tugs her to him, burying his wet cold nose in her messy hair.

“I did something so incredibly stupid and you’re going to laugh your ass off, Dana Scully, when I tell you all about it. You’re going to hurt my feelings and really let me have it.”

“I don’t laugh at you,” she grumbles, sinking into the embrace. The best part of having a dog was having something to hold. “Not when it really matters.”

“We’ll see. Get better and we’ll see.”

He fumbles for the remote, turns off the TV, and casts them into bedroom darkness. Her headache goes away. They get a few hours of sleep.


	40. what stays behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mulder sees Scully's bruises after Irresistible.

Donnie Pfaster will sit his ass down in the electric chair sometime in the painfully distant future — Illinois will make good on that like they did with Gacy. He understands the argument against capitol punishment, doesn’t trust the government to get his age right on his driver’s license. But every time he comes away from these cases he gets a hankering, a real mouthwatering pang for fried psychopath, extra crispy, two pickles on the side, please.

He’s given the field office more than enough to nail the bastard. Of course they’re offering it over to him. He used to be flown out for cases like this all the time, cases that were too dark, too sick, too spooky for anyone else to handle, and oh look, golden boy over there is already clogged with the shit of this hell of an earth. He’s got the touch. He’s been Touched. Spooky’s practically one himself. Let him handle it.

Fuck that.

Knowing that a case like this could do wonders for them when appealing to higher ups, he officially takes himself off of it when the victim is ushered out of his arms to issue her statement. He has to.

He keeps seeing dead Scully.

They let him drive her to the hospital, and he waits around as she’s scanned and scanned and scanned, and he sees dead Scully some more.

He’s had other partners and had been responsible for protecting their lives. Jerry’s death had been a freak accident that no one could have anticipated, but he still blames himself for it.

It’s true that he has never been known to be a team player. But one thing he can absolutely say for himself is that he is one hell of a damn fine watchdog, and he’s always had his partners’ backs. Intuition, loyalty, an extra gun strapped to his ankle. He’s never had any complaints before.

So why the  _fuck_  can’t he keep Scully safe?

She meets him in the hallway, looking grumpy and untraumatized. She touches his shoulder and he startles — not that he’d been asleep, it’s just that Scully is alive now, and he’d been picturing her dead.

“Cracked rib,” she says. “Some bruising. And some restless nights ahead, but I’m okay.” And she tries a smile on her scratched up, pale face, like putting lipstick on a mass grave, and they go to the motel he’s staying at and book her a room. He’s sorry it’s not the Hilton. A fluffy bathrobe and a chocolate mint on the pillow is exactly what he needs right now.

He hears the innkeeper say something to Scully about extra blankets, and silently vows to make sure someone makes that happen.

That’s —

That’s the  _thing_  about this, isn’t it?

Can’t trust himself. Sure as fuck can’t trust anyone else. If he hadn’t been in Minnesota when Scully was kidnapped, she’d be dead. Can’t trust the hospitals to know what the fuck they’re talking about, can’t trust anyone in the Bureau to do their jobs and catch criminals. Her own family had been hours away from pulling the fucking plug on her.

He spends a lot of time vacillating between two trains of thought: he is alone in this world because he is crazy, or he is alone in this world because he is not crazy. These days he is more solid. He trusts himself more and everyone else less.

On the subject of keeping Scully safe, he is beginning to worry that he is absolutely losing it. He doesn’t get it. Why does everyone choose to fail her like this? Don’t they know how important she is? Why did he have to see Scully’s tombstone before she’d even taken her last breath? A pretty woman goes missing and everybody does nothing, twice. A good friend shows visible signs of distress during a horrific case and he doesn’t push further, despite,  _despite_  knowing perfectly well what she’s like, knowing perfectly well she’d need that extra push.

He knocks on her door and she lets him in, looking pained with a furrowed brow and pursed, nude lips.

“How am I supposed to sleep?” She grumbles, leaving him to sit in the cracked leather armchair. “What do you need?”

“I’m just checking in before you go to sleep,” he murmurs, yawning. He won’t sleep for two weeks.

She doesn’t answer, but peers into the mirror thoughtfully as she bends close over the counter. He watches uncomfortably as she rolls up her shirt, and sucks air through his teeth when her back is revealed to him.

“God, Scully,” his voice shakes. It’s been a little under twelve hours since they’ve left the Pfaster residence, and the bruises have already checked in for their lengthy visit. They’re red in the middle with brighter red rings around each one, not yet blue and black, and he can’t even imagine how much worse it’s going to look when  _that_  happens. They’re everywhere, wide, blossoming reminders of this horrible night.

There’s an ice bucket next to her, and she slowly fills a thick washcloth with a handful of ice and presses the pack to her lower hip. She hisses.

“I’m alright, Mulder,” she says, bringing the pack higher up on her back. He must’ve been babbling something. They lock eyes in the mirror, and she tries another panting, awful smile. She shifts, twists in wordless pain, and slides the ice further to the right. “This is the easy part.”

Dana Scully. At least he can count on Dana Scully to take care of Dana Scully.

No one delivers extra blankets, so he gives her his own and makes due with the sheets.


	41. different to hear it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mulder overhears Scully telling someone he is handsome and beautiful. Post IWTB.

Scully’s little Catholic doctor friends from the hospital sure enjoy getting blasted. Not like he can fault them; just on what Scully’s told him alone, working there is a pretty tough gig emotionally. He’s always invited when they go out, and he tried once or twice, but he doesn’t like where his head goes at those things. He feels out of place, judged. Liquor just makes it worse. He’s happy to play designated driver.

She doesn’t answer her phone when he calls to tell her he’s arrived, so he parks and hops out of the car, stepping into the quaint pub with the keys jangling in his fist. He sees a sexy redhead knocking back a glass of water at a stool near the front of the bar. That’s his girl. 

Her coworkers are laughing, she is laughing, animated in a way he rarely sees anymore. Shit, all of them are so… put together. He feels positively primitive with his beard and his cargo shorts, a caveman about to drag a helpless woman back to his lair. How can he spin it so Scully starts getting a ride home from these things, or calling a cab instead of him? Not like she’s unused to him being a shitty husband.

When he gets closer, he can parse out bits and pieces of what she’s saying. He stops in his tracks when he realizes he’s the star of the conversation.

“I’m  _so happy_ to be married,” she slurs, shaking her head. “To the love of my life. I’m so happy I can tell someone. I’m so happy I can tell you guys!” 

“Some of the nuns were wondering why you didn’t just give in and join them,” quips some random lady. He  _thinks_ he met her at a fundraiser, but the light is low and his heart is pounding in his ears. “Turns out you were just hiding your man.” 

“Oh, and he’s beautiful,” Scully sighs. Oh yeah, she’s drunk. But he’s tearing up like an idiot, squeezing water out of his eyes with the heels of his palms. “So handsome and brilliant. I can’t wait until he gets here.” 

“I can’t wait until you stop bragging,” another doctor grouses. 

“Hey there,” Mulder finally interjects, stepping up behind Scully and placing a hand on her shoulder. “You ordered a cab?”

“Mulder!” She twists around in her seat and throws her arms around him, nearly toppling them both over. He doesn’t care. He hugs her and hugs her and drags her drunk ass to the car, giggling with her all the way. He never forgets what he heard that night, even when she removes all of her things from the house.


	42. Chapter 42

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scully accidentally takes acid! MSR UST.

“Scully!”

Mulder had this nightmare before, but they got it all backward. He was supposed to be the naked one, the writhing swarm all dressed to their chattering teeth, pointing and booing at him while their laughter imitated the rampant beating of his heart. They got it backward, alright – here he was fully clothed, the crowd as bare as helpless, wrinkled babies – and still the joke was on him.

He swept through the crowd, slapping away wandering hands tugging at his jacket sleeves and grabbing fistfuls of all his many parts. Soon the dirty hippies shrugged their shoulders and turned back to the crackling bonfire, leaving him to continue his chase in peace.

Free from the sea of fingers, he spotted her. A streak of red and – pink. Pale, pretty pink.

Shit.

SHIT.

Where the fuck did her clothes go?

“Sculllaaaay!” He bent down to untie and kick off his loafers, dug his work socks into the sand, and barreled after her at full speed. Three long sprints and the uneven ground sent him tumbling face forward.

“Catch me if you can, Foxy!” Scully hollered behind her, throwing her arms in the air. He groaned and spat out sand, scrambling back to his feet. She moved like a fucking wood nymph as she skipped over the rugged earth, springy and wild under the red desert moon. His breath poured out in heaping gulps and his lungs burned hotter than that mass of slick and sunburned flesh he’d left behind.

He was still a lot faster, and when he gained balance it was over. He jogged up behind her, only intending to grab her by the shoulders and haul her off to wherever the hell he had parked the car, maybe three whole states back…

But again the sand pulled him under, and he collapsed on top of her in a half-tackle. He almost forgot himself in all the excitement, yanking her wrists behind her back as if he were cuffing a perp. When she yelped he let go and hurriedly rolled off.

“Scully,” he wheezed into his arm, willing his heart to stop beating so fast. Spending all day under the sun, interviewing a bunch of naturists, high off their faces, over the thunderous pound of a plank drum, had really taken it out of him. “Where… where are… Scully, where are your goddamn clothes?” He forced himself to sit up when she didn’t answer. Her eyes were closed, her lips moving with no sound. “Scully?”

“You caught me,” she cackled finally, leaning back on her arms and howling at the sky. His eyes darted down to her propped up knee, then to where her thighs spilled wide open, and he quickly went about shrugging off his blazer.

“Take this, put it on.” He threw it at her. Her eyes snapped open when his balled up jacket hit her in the chest. “It’s freezing.”

“I don’t want to do this,” she said, as serious as he had ever heard her, but she pulled on the jacket anyway. She paused when she had the buttons all done up, sniffed at lapel, and held her arms out to study the floppy sleeves. “I’m Mulder now.”

“You have my deepest condolences,” he grunted, dragging himself through the sand to be closer to her. “Being Mulder won’t be very fun when Scully comes to kill him.”

“Pfft.” She dismissed him, tossing her hand in the air. “Scully.”

“She’s alright.” He slung his arm over her back, and together they watched the barren horizon. The fire was behind them, so all they could see were rows and rows of windblown sand and the indigo stamp of the night sky. “When she’s not tripping on two tabs of laboratory-grade LSD.”

“Pfft.” She tossed the same hand, leaning her head on his shoulder. “Laboratory-grade LSD.”

“Don’t knock it until you’ve stripped off all your clothes and thrown them in a fire, is what I’m gathering.”

“That is exactly it, Mulder,” she agreed, so viciously certain it made him chuckle. How far gone must she be for her to agree with him like that? Time to carry her back to the car, drive back to the motel, and keep her occupied with a flashlight and some late night cartoons. But she had other plans.

“If I take off this jacket…”

“Please don’t,” he said.

She took it off anyway. He didn’t look at her breasts. He looked at the stars and thought of all the other times he had seen her breasts, and that was enough. She inhaled, a deep, stormlike sound. A tunnel of wind. Then she released it with much less power.

“I’m Scully again.” She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, swaying to some music playing deep in the earth, iron and nickel pumping like hot blood through its core. He couldn’t help but watch her when she slipped the jacket back on and brought her wrist up to her nose. “And everything changes. Now I’m you.”

He didn’t stop her when she crawled into his lap and buried her nose in his neck, turning his body into her cool, dark hiding space. The naked felons would be there in the morning for him to arrest, for their crimes of drugging a federal agent and conjuring fire spirits to kill CEOs of two major pharmaceutical companies. He kissed the top of her head and clutched her to him.


	43. badder blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sheriff Hartwell arrives in town. Scully likes it, Mulder doesn't. PG, fluff, established relationship, s7.

**1.**  It’s the one thing he doesn’t want to believe at first sight, but even he has to admit the evidence is overwhelming. He’s had his eyes checked. He’s mentally sound, as much as he could hope for in this perversely unlucky life of his. As much as he wants to, it’s just not his lot in life to deny what he sees right before his very eyes. That’s more Scully’s gig.

“I figured y’all might have some expertise to offer,” the Sheriff spits behind his two front teeth. “Things have gotten... real  _weird_  in Chaney.”

 **2.**  It takes everything in him to pay full attention to the details of the case as Hartwell spells them out, because he’s too busy focusing in on Scully’s every move. And that really says something, because normally he’d be all over something like this. He hears the word  _werewolves_  and he’s almost,  _almost_  pulled out of his reverie.

“You know, Sheriff,” Scully draws out, and he hates how she says it.  _Sher-iff._ Perfectly intoned, clipped in that way that really lets you know she’s paying attention to your every word. “Early reports of porphyria were often mistaken for lycanthropy. Sufferers exhibited symptoms of psychosis, which could explain the rabid... bestial behavior of the creature you’re describing.”  _Bestial_. “And photosensitivity, which would explain the avoidance of sunlight. But tell me Sher-iff. Is your beastman covered in hair?”

“Well, Dana.” Sheriff Hartwell scratches his neck and scoots his chair closer, thinking much harder about a fantastically simple yes or no question than anybody ought to. “I don’t suppose he is.”

“Not all crazed men are beasts,”  _Dana_  says.

“I’m afraid you came all this way for nothing,” Mulder says, sounding perfectly delighted.

 **3.**  Oh, but  _Dana_  just can’t let it go.

“Now Mulder,” Scully frowns, leaning back against his desk. “We can at least finish listening to him.”

He’s heard enough of that unfortunate twang to last him a lifetime. “Why did you come here instead of call?” He asks, sounding put out as if someone had simply showed up at his home without first making sure he wasn’t busy.

“Well with your last visit, I reckon we didn’t leave off on the right foot.” He looks suitably guilty, holding his cowboy hat in front of his chest. “I wanted to apologize on behalf of my people and...” he looks at  _Dana_  now, earnest as any country bumpkin. “Myself. We acted rather poorly to you folks, and it didn’t feel right askin’ for your help without a sincere apology.”

Mulder sees that day in full color, sees her drowning and rumpled in a suede jacket and a badge that didn’t belong to her. It destroys any sense of goodwill he might have had for the well-meaning, tragically simple vampires of Chaney, Texas.

“It’s a shame you didn’t call. We can’t help you.” And he gets up to show Sheriff the door.

 **4.**  “Excuse us a minute,” Scully smiles, a double edged sword. The edge meant for Hartwell is sharp as cotton; the edge meant for Mulder will slice through bone. She motions for Mulder to follow her to the nook by the elevator, out of earshot from their visitor.

“Just  _what_  do you think you’re doing?” She demands, crossing her arms over her chest.

Incensed that he even has to argue about this, his teeth grind painfully as he grits out: “Why are you even buying this?” He asks. “Because your taste is  _stupid_ , Scully, and Sheriff Hartwell is as stupid as they come?” A curtain falls over his eyes, shading him off from her as she visibly softens.

“Mulder...” she starts, reaching out to touch his arm. He brushes her off. “ _Mulder_ ,” she yanks at his shirt, pulling him close to her. “Are you...”

“Am I  _what_? Astounded by the revelation one must only speak in a barely comprehensible molasses-entrenched draw in order to win your allegiance? Christ, all this time I wasted trying to give you  _evidence_ and  _proof_ when I could have just attached some spurs to my loafers --” He’s cut off (and lightly strangled) by another yank, this time by his tie, and her soft lips planting firmly on his.

“Mulder,” she pulls at his tie again, whispering. “When have I  _ever_  turned down a case?”

“You complain about every single one.” He’s still mad, even as he wipes her lipstick from his mouth and considers how this is the first time they’ve kissed outside of their homes. “Hey!” He whines as she yanks on his tie again.

“When have I ever  _turned down_ a case that we didn’t try to investigate first?”

He thinks it over, sure there’s an answer somewhere in all the years she’s scoffed at the chase. But there’s nothing. He slumps, shamed. “Never,” he mumbles. He kisses her back this time when she steps up on her tiptoes to draw him in.

“I’m just  _so_ eager to prove to you that werewolves don’t exist,” she murmurs into his mouth. He feels better already.

 **5.**  Sheriff Hartwell shakes both of their hands with intense gratitude before he leaves their office, clasping his hat to his chest with southern gentility. Mulder books two flights to Texas as Scully fills out the 302, and they playfully argue over where they’ll go for dinner.


	44. good to hear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> s7, ivf arc, MSR ust; prompt -- "HAVE YOU EVER LOVED SOMEONE SO MUCH THAT JUST HEARING THEIR NAME OR SEEING A PICTURE OF THEM MAKES YOU SO HAPPY YOU HAVE TO SIT THERE A MOMENT BECAUSE YOU CANT STOP SMILING"

The cafe hums with caffeinated chatter as Scully sweetens her decaf to her liking, occasionally sliced through by the harsh whir of a coffee grinder or the steady release of the espresso machine. On a Saturday mid morning, her favorite establishment is blessedly even-paced, unafflicted with large crowds eager to grab their coffee and rush off to work. Finding a table isn’t the monumental task it would be on, say, a Tuesday at 7 a.m., where the line shoots straight out of the door. She finds a warm, sunny spot right next to the window, and ignores the book in her purse to simply stare out at the street, where college students and young professionals shop, meet up with friends, and give money to the buskers whose music only barely filters through the thick wooden door of the coffee shop.

“Dana?” Someone asks from behind her, jolting her out of her reverie.

She whips her head around, lips still on the mouthpiece of her coffee cup. “Mary,” she says with a surprised smile. The older woman, her mother’s friend from church, joins her at her table without an invitation, but Scully finds she doesn’t mind it all that much.

They run through the gamut of niceties, inquiring after each other’s families, making jokes about the new youth group leader. Whenever Mary makes a comment about Scully’s dismal attendance rate for Sunday mass, she subtly changes the topic — to college football, to Mary’s incoming grandchild, to the Easter potluck coming up in a few weeks.

“How’s that job of yours?” Mary asks, lifting her brows as she takes a sip of her tea. “We’ve heard some… interesting stories from your mother.”

It takes Scully a moment to come up with a decent answer, before she finally decides on the truth. “They’re good, Mary,” she says. And it  _is_ true. When she thinks of the work, she’s no longer stuck with a thin needle of self doubt, wondering  _how long_ or  _can I keep doing this for the rest of my life_?

“And how is your partner, Fox?” Mary asks, tilting her head full of silver curls. Scully starts, sure she’s never spoken to Mary about her partner, and Mary clarifies: “Maggie asks for our prayers,” she says. “Often.”

Fox, Scully thinks, the edges of her lips curling up unconsciously. Fox Mulder. Fox  _William_  Mulder. She hasn’t told him — god, how could she, she’s not even sure how involved he wants to be — but she likes  _William._ She loves thinking about a healthy young boy with soft hazel eyes and limbs awkwardly stretched like taffy.

Fox William  _Mulder_. She then thinks only of Mulder, of what he’s doing right now, and wonders if he might not be available later. Of course he will be. If she asks. If only she gets the courage to ask.

“He’s doing fine,” she replies, willing her stomach to calm down. She tells herself it’s nausea, but nausea doesn’t typically make her feel giddy, or force her to hide her smile into her cup.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Mary says. She reminds Scully to sign up for the potluck — “don’t bring a dessert, everybody’s bringing desserts” — and takes her polite leave, pushing in her chair and ambling into the sunny square outside.

A few minutes later, Scully’s phone rings in her purse.

“Scully,” she answers.

“It’s me. What are you doing today?”


End file.
